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the receivables resulted in substantial losses that passed
through from SMP to Somerville S Trust to Mr. Ackerman: A
$147,486,000 loss on the sale of the $150 million receivable in
1997; a $80,190,418 loss on the sale of the $81 million
receivable in 1998; and a $4,097,577 loss on the sale of the $79
million receivable in 1997. But these losses were not enough for
the Ackerman group.
In 1997, Mr. Lerner actively marketed a tax deal to
Imperial, which was searching for tax losses to offset
substantial gains that it expected to realize. Mr. Lerner was a
director at Imperial and offered Imperial a stake in SMP’s
purported “film business.” From the beginning, however, Imperial
was interested in one thing only, a piece of the more than $1
billion in built-in losses that SMP possessed. Mr. Lerner
proposed that Imperial would purchase a 25-percent ownership
interest in SMP; upon disposal of SMP’s high-basis assets,
Imperial would be allocated approximately $400 million in losses.
164(...continued)
other dealings with TroMetro and Mr. van Merkensteijn. For
example, on Dec. 7, 1998, SMP purportedly purchased a 50-percent
interest in Railcar Management Partners, LLC, which Mr. van
Merkensteijn owned, for $1.4 million (approximately the same
amount that Mr. van Merkensteijn paid altogether for his
purchases of the receivables). Given Mr. van Merkensteijn’s
close relationship with Mr. Lerner, evidenced in part by his
sharing office space with Crown Capital, we cannot foreclose the
possibility that SMP funneled back Mr. van Merkensteijn’s
purchase payments or “financed” TroMetro’s purchases of the
receivables in 1997 and 1998.
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