Robbinsville-based company owes millions to companies in several states
Randy Jordan
***Aug. 4, 2022 Update: Lawsuit settled between Graham County Land Company, Flexible Funding
Tallulah – Graham County Land Company – one of the largest private employers in Graham County – is unable to pay millions of dollars in debt and is essentially out of business.
The Robbinsville-based company provides heavy construction and civil engineering services from coast to coast – but since 2020, has had severe cash flow problems in North and South Carolina, Florida, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Louisiana and in California, where a debtor there alleges larceny, a criminal charge.
Randy Jordan, president of Graham County Land Company since 1998, reportedly summed up his company’s situation in a text on Sept. 15 to its chief creditor, Flexible Funding LLC.
“This business is destroyed at this point,” the text reads. “I have no CPA, no lawyer, no bonding, no NCDOT or SCDOT, can’t collect any money due us. I am personally guaranteed on the surety bonds, they are fixing to step in on about 5 or 6 jobs. They will start filing UCC filings.
“I have about six lawsuits with subs that I can’t get lawyers for, they will have judgments before month end. The employees today have no health insurance. I am fixing to have someone else in charge.
“Did you guys read this? We are done,” Jordan texted.
When contacted by The Graham Star, Jordan declined to comment about the company’s situation.
Invoices, payroll
Flexible Funding – which itself is named in the California lawsuit filed against Graham County Land Company – filed its own lawsuit against the company and its principal officers in September to recover losses. It also filed an affidavit in support of a motion to appoint a general receiver for Graham County Land.
Starting in 2019, Flexible Funding – Graham County Land’s largest creditor – has been purchasing unpaid invoices from the company and provided a line of credit.
The arrangement has led to an array of problems for Flexible Financing totaling $13 million – and counting.
“GCLC recently completed a hurricane clean-up contract in Beauregard Parish, La.,” Flexible Funding said in its filing. “GCLC sold its invoices for this contract to Flexible Funding. GCLA represented to Flexible Funding that Beauregard Parish owed $340,000 on the contract. When Flexible Funding investigated, it learned that the parish was holding the funds because GCLC owed over $450,000 to sub-contractors and vendors.
“Flexible Funding paid the $450,000 to try to protect GCLC’s reputation in Louisiana in the hope that GCLC could secure future hurricane clean-up projects. But the upshot is that the invoices GCLC sold to Flexible Funding were worth less than nothing.”
Flexible Funding said in its filing that Graham County Land Company is unable to pay its debts as they become due, is over-advanced by over $5 million and owes the company over $13 million.
Some of the purchased receivables were for contracts that Graham County Land bid on, but did not win.
For example, the company submitted invoices from Abbot Construction – including one for $150,000 that turned out were bid quotes for future projects that had not been awarded.
“Flexible Funding is aware of other similar instances and … suspects there are other instances like this of which it is unaware,” according to the court filing.
Flexible Funding alleges that Graham County Land has outright stolen money in one case. In that case, the company had a subcontractor provide rough grading services for a Cherokee County school.
It generated invoices and sold them to Flexible Funding.
Then in July, the filing alleges, Randy Jordan sent his son, Storm Jordan (who is also a Graham County Land Company officer) to pick up a check from the subcontractor, without forwarding the proceeds to Flexible Funding.
Flexible Funding sent a notice of default to Graham County Land Company in August and since that time, has paid close to $2 million on the company’s behalf toward payroll, insurance and other other expenses to keep the company going.
That includes $200,000 per week for payroll of more than 100 employees.
“Every week, GCLC requests that Flexible Funding pay its payroll because it can’t do so itself,” according to the filing.
Still, Graham County Land refuses to reciprocate or cooperate, provide financial information, even refusing to change how it operates business or appoint a restructuring officer or turnaround consultant.
An investigation performed on Flexible Funding’s behalf concluded that Randy Jordan transferred over $2.8 million to other businesses that he owns, including Carver Contracting LLC, NatCivil, Tarheel Realty & Development, Jordan Properties and Snowbird Mountain Trout Company.
Dozens of vehicles owned or leased by Graham County Land Company and its affiliates are staged behind the Graham County Recycling Center off N.C. Highway 143, and could be auctioned off to partially pay the company’s debts. The vehicles include late-model pickup trucks, cargo trucks and wheeled, heavy equipment used by the company in its construction work.
They comprise the company’s only assets; Graham County Land Company owns no real estate.
The company has over-stated the value of receivables it sold to Flexible Funding and to those, they are subjected to or in danger of waste, loss, dissipation, or impairment, the lawsuit alleges.
“Many of the purchased receivables are for projects that GCLC has not completed or projects that GCLC has not started. GCLC has no money to work on projects or purchase insurance or bond coverage,” according to the court filing.
Some of the purchased receivables are for completed projects where Graham County Land Company has failed to pay vendors and subcontractors because the company mismanaged the projects, misappropriated funds, and now has no money, Flexible Funding alleges.
In other cases, Graham County Land Company failed to provide completion and closing documentation to the debtor, hindering Flexible Funding’s ability to collect.
Flexible Funding has been investigating some projects where the total contract amount was less than the purchased receivables.
Flexible Funding has been investigating those projects with “minimal cooperation” from Graham County Land to determine whether there was negligence, gross mismanagement, or fraud.
Like many businesses, Graham County Land Company fell on hard times during COVID-19, and over the next two years received about $5.26 million in federally-backed loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.
It borrowed an additional $2.5 million, Flexible Funding alleges, saying that “those funds are gone.”
But problems started emerging in 2018, well before the pandemic.
Another suit
According to the Original Mowbray’s Tree Service Inc. – a California company that filed a lawsuit against Graham County Land Company, its officers, and Flexible Funding – complaints started arriving about the company’s “unsatisfactory work, chargebacks, unpaid equipment rentals, damage to (Pacific Gas & Electric) facilities, payroll, unpaid union dues and lawsuits.
Original Mowbray’s Tree Service said it spend almost $930,800 resolving and settling claims resulting from its dealing with Graham County Land.
“GCLC is owned and operated by (Randy) Jordan as a shell, which is under-capitalized and uses assets for the personal benefit as an alter ego,” Original Mowbray’s Tree Service alleged in its lawsuit, filed in February in California. “There is no separateness between the Randy on the one hand and the GCLC on the other.”