The plan outlined by owner Sonia Anderson to save Jazzy Joe's, her West End bar and music club, collapsed yesterday.
Anderson said she had decided against using Robert Lockwood's private resources to settle a series of debts that triggered a court-ordered closing of the club and confiscation of the club's liquor license last month.
And Lockwood told the Times he had been contacted by an intermediary but had made a quick analysis of Anderson's problems and said he had no interest in getting involved.
"I have no interest in her place," said Lockwood, a Beverly financial workout specialist who said his decision was based on the amount of money Anderson owed, the number of creditors she owed it to and the legal situation she is facing.
Anderson said that, when she told the Licensing Board on Tuesday she was using Lockwood to extricate herself from a legal web of debts and court orders, she was unaware of Lockwood's own checkered legal history. In 2000, he was convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to 17 months in prison, according to the public information office of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston.
More recently, Lockwood has been on the state's list of most notorious tax delinquents. According to WBZ-TV, Lockwood, a resident of Beverly, has been convicted of failing to pay taxes that now total $2.3 million.
In the WBZ report, Lockwood denied owing the state. He hung up on the Times when it attempted to ask him about the same issues. But before he did, he said he had decided to have nothing to do with Jazzy Joe's.
Anderson declined to say what it was she learned about Lockwood that convinced her not to employ him to help her extricate Jazzy Joe's from a series of court cases filed by creditors — including her former lawyer, Patricia Johnstone; a former vendor; and a former friend who put up her home to secure a loan to Anderson, only to discover Anderson had not been paying the loan.
Laverne Saputo sat in the audience at the Licensing Board on Tuesday while Anderson said Lockwood would help her settle her debts within two weeks.
Saputo has a $148,942 Superior Court judgment against Anderson.
Jazzy Joe's owes Johnstone more than $6,000, while AP Vending is owed $63,000, its lawyer, Peter Ross, told the board. The owner of 84 Main St., where Jazzy Joe's opened in 2005, also has obtained an eviction order from the courts.
It was Johnstone's effort to obtain her legal fee that led to the shutdown of the club in April under a court order. The board gave Anderson until its next meeting on June 10 to clear up her problems, reopen and put the liquor license back in use or have it confiscated and auctioned off to pay creditors.
All creditors at the meeting agreed they'd rather be paid than have the license sold, and were willing to wait in hopes Anderson could settle out of court.
"This is going to come to an end," board Chairman Edward Pasquina told Anderson on Tuesday. "The board has every right to take (the license) now."
Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
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