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November 26, 2009

Restaurant tangle leads to Beverly Farms financier

License nets $17K, but Lockwood faces more financial fights

By Patrick Anderson

BEVERLY — Tax collectors and now his creditors are taking back assets from Beverly Farms financier Robert Lockwood, the accused tax scofflaw and alleged secret owner of East Gloucester's Harbor House restaurant.

The state Department of Revenue sold the Harbor House's liquor license at auction last Thursday, picking up $17,000 to offset what it listed as a $2.6 million tax bill owed by Lockwood and his business interests.

And the East Main Street bar and grill may be the least of Lockwood's concerns.

The $4 million Beverly Farms mansion where he has lived is facing foreclosure by the same Boston lender who holds the Harbor House mortgage.

The gated estate is scheduled for auction on Jan. 13 along with the Goat Hill Grill on Rantoul Street in Beverly, another defaulted property that has been tied to Lockwood.

The state Department of Revenue seized the Harbor House in September after two men who had run the restaurant told agents they were paper owners for Lockwood, who had been in control of and took the proceeds from the business for years.

In statements to tax agents, Christopher Gleeson of South Easton and Vincent Orlando of Manchester described mortgages going unpaid and vendors cutting off the restaurant after bills went unpaid.

Those accounts now look like signs that the business arrangements and payments coming from a number of entities connected to Lockwood had either stopped or fallen apart this year.

The apparent opulence of Lockwood's lifestyle — the mansion, expensive cars, and travel detailed in divorce proceedings — made the state's inability to collect from him a source of frustration to both tax collectors and taxpayers.

Lockwood has denied owing the millions the state demands from him, and complex ownership arrangements, under trustees, and corporate entities have made it difficult to prove that assets belong to him.

While the state was only able to get $17,000 from the Harbor House license, it is still pursuing other means of extracting money from Lockwood.

This fall, the Department of Revenue seized $250,000 from a bank account listed to Hub Technologies, a Middleborough steel engineering and manufacturing firm.

Lockwood, which Hub in court filings described as a consultant, was a signatory to the account, giving him access to it.

Hub, which claimed $5.5 million in revenues, appealed the state's decision to freeze the account and claimed that the money belonged to the company and not Lockwood.

But a request for an injunction was denied in Superior Court and then again in state Appeals Court.

"Indeed, while Hub strives to distance itself from Lockwood (portraying him as a mere 'consultant' to the company) there was evidence of a very different sort of relationship," Judge James Milkey wrote in the decision. "For example, it appears that Lockwood was regularly making alimony payments out of the corporate accounts."

Calls to Lockwood's Beverly Farms phone number were not returned for this story, and a lawyer who has represented him in the past said Tuesday he could not speak to any of the current tax issues because he does not represent Lockwood in those matters.

Lockwood built a reputation as a bailout specialist for business and has been involved with a number of enterprises, including restaurants and mobile phone companies.

In 2000, he was convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to 17 months in prison.

Harvard-educated, Lockwood ran into trouble with the tax collector while he was running the Cambridge restaurant 33 Dunster St. from 1989 to 1993.

Tim Murphy of Rockport, the former owner of the Goat Hill Grill, said he was introduced to Lockwood by Orlando when he began falling behind on payments at the Beverly restaurant.

"(Lockwood) promised to bring me up to date on meals tax and mortgage," Murphy said Tuesday. "Behind my back, he placed me in Chapter 7 (bankruptcy). He ended up with the building and business."

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