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NURSING HOME MANAGER ED Holman's legal tiff with Arkansas Teacher Retirement System isn't the first time he's been in the middle of a disputed six-digit bank transaction that erupted in litigation with a former employer.
Holman was fired two years ago as chief operating officer of Weems & Co., a Little Rock securities firm. His employment contract with the now-defunct company was terminated after he unsuccessfully attempted to withdraw more than $175,000 from a company bank account.
Marlon Weems, the owner and principle broker of the firm, said he still doesn't know what Holman intended to do with the money. During the ensuing litigation, Holman offered up a couple of different reasons.
The dispute over who controlled the money resulted in Pinnacle Bank freezing the account until a judge could settle the question. With its regulator-required capital tied up, Weems said he was forced to close the company.
Holman declined to be interviewed on the record concerning Weems & Co.
Weems, who now lives in New Jersey, said the blowup began in March 2000 when the firm's auditors noted that Holman was the lone signatory on a company account.
That account held most of the firm's money, and the recommendation was that at least one other name be added for safety's sake.
Weems said he was unaware that Holman had set up the account. He also wondered how Holman was able to open the company account in the first Place since the necessary corporate resolution was never authorized.
Weems said bank officials balked when he attempted to add the name of his wife, Shannon, the company's chief compliance officer and financial operations principal, as a signatory on the account.
On March 24, 2000, Shannon Weems discovered that Holman had transferred $14,500 from the company's commercial checking account to the company account that he alone controlled.
Marlon Weems said later that day he received a phone call from Bob Althoff, president of Pinnacle Bank in Little Rock.
Weems said that Althoff told him that Holman had just left a bank branch, where he had attempted to withdraw about $175,000 in the form of a cashier's check. The money, representing virtually all of Weems & Co.'s available capital, was in the firm's high-yield money market account, where...