A St. Paul bank executive is accused of swindling $300,000 from a man who bought two doughnut stores from him in 2022.
Justin Ansel Butler falsified documents to make the Duck Donuts franchises in Woodbury and the Mall of America look profitable, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in Washington County District Court charging him with felony theft by swindle.
Butler, 41, of Woodbury, has been the chief risk officer for Bremer Bank since August 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile. He previously was senior vice president of consumer banking control management at Wells Fargo.
Butler did not respond to a request for comment Monday, and an attorney is not listed in his case file. He was charged by summons and is scheduled to appear in court on the charge Feb. 25.
A Bremer Bank spokeswoman said the bank couldn’t comment Monday without more time to review the charges.
Duck Donuts originated in North Carolina in 2007 and has grown to more than 150 locations across 26 states. The mall store since has closed, leaving Woodbury as the franchise’s lone Minnesota’s location.
According to the criminal complaint, investigators with Woodbury police, the Minnesota Department of Commerce and U.S. Secret Service started looking into the business sale in October 2023.
A man had told them that in July 2022 he began to consider buying the two Duck Donuts franchises. Both businesses were being sold by Butler, who provided “extensive” documentation related to their profitability, both in retail sales and in catering, the complaint says.
The man bought the two franchises for $975,000 in a sale finalized Nov. 14, 2022. He said he took money from his 401(k) retirement account, home equity and life insurance to make the $195,000 down payment.
Shortly after assuming control, the buyer grew suspicious as the stores were nowhere near as profitable as Butler claimed, particularly in catering, the charges say. He hired a computer forensic firm to investigate the documents Butler had given him, and their analysis revealed Butler had edited several of the PDFs he gave to the buyer, the charges say.
“The edited documents purported to show that the businesses were profitable, however in reality, the businesses were losing a considerable amount of money prior to being sold,” the charges say.
Butler then arranged to buy the businesses back from the man, who had filed bankruptcy. However, the man told police that his $195,000 down payment was gone, along with some $100,000 in additional expenses he incurred while trying to keep the businesses afloat.
A man who worked as operations manager of the two franchises from 2020 to August 2023 told investigators he believed the stores were losing $20,000 to $30,000 a month. That man said that in July 2022, prior to the businesses being advertised for sale, Butler offered to sell him both locations for $400,000.
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