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A court-appointed trustee has closed the main store of 47th Street Photo Inc. and is examining whether to sell or liquidate the venerable consumer electronics retailer.
Last week, trustee Alan Cohen, chairman of Manhattan-based Alco Capital Group, shuttered the company's 47th Street store--one of its two remaining outlets--and closed its 150,000-square-foot Brooklyn warehouse and headquarters.
The trustee was appointed June 16 by a bankruptcy judge amid allegations of fraud against 47th Street Photo's owners.
Control of the company's remaining store, on 45th Street, has been given to Tuttnauer Co., an Israeli medical equipment manufacturer that provided 47th Street Photo with a $3 million court-approved loan last August. Tuttnauer charged in a recent lawsuit that $2 million in inventory has been misappropriated. Under the oversight of Mr. Cohen, Tuttnauer representatives are ensuring that they receive revenues from any sales of inventory they bought for the store.
"This is tragic," says Ted Berkowitz, a partner in the bankruptcy group of Meltzer Lippe Goldstein Wolf Schlissel & Sazar, which represents the unsecured trade creditors.
47th Street Photo was hit hard last July, when a federal grand jury began investigating the...