Southfield, Michigan property management firm Hartman and Tyner, owners of Mardi Gras Casino and Race Track in Hallandale, Florida for four decades, recently filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming Mardi Gras Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Dan Adkins “engaged in self-dealing, corporate waste and gross mismanagement, concealing the poor financial state of H&T’s businesses caused by his misconduct so that he could enrich himself and his family members.”
The lawsuit further claims Mardi Gras lost “millions of dollars each year” under Adkins’ management, and that Adkins “placed several of his family members on H&T’s payroll even though they did not report to work”; disregarded orders while the Mardi Gras Casino was closed due to Hurricane Irma damage to “cut payroll and lay off employees to cut costs, causing H&T to pay out more than $1.5 million in payroll; caused H&T to ‘loan’ himself approximately $1 million, which served no legitimate business purpose”; and cost the company “about $8 million in legal legislative fees and lobbying fees with no material results” over the last decade. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Last November, Adkins sued H&T and its directors, accusing them of lying to him that he’d be paid “millions of dollars” upon sale of the company’s gambling businesses in Florida, West Virginia and Michigan. Adkins’ suit, which has moved to federal court, states H&T director and President Heidi Hartman Wenokur, daughter of H&T co-founder Bernard Hartman, “accepted an offer for the sale of Mardi Gras Florida for substantially less than market value,” costing the company $20 million. Billionaire Jeffrey Soffer, owner of the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, is in the process of buying the Mardi Gras, which closed last year due to Hurricane Irma damages.
Adkins’ lawsuit also says his “day-to-day authority has been stripped” and he has “effectively lost the ability to govern the enterprise he has been at the helm of for almost 30 years.” H&T also removed him from its board and cut his pay, the suit says.
Adkins said he had planned to leave H&T 10 years earlier “to pursue his own entrepreneurial interests.” Instead, he said, Hartman persuaded him to remain by falsely promising that “upon a sale of gaming operations Adkins would receive millions of dollars if he built them up and made them more valuable.” Adkins said he lost an opportunity to become a gambling lobbyist and possibly earn “over $1 million annually.”
Adkins also said he was instrumental in gaining “additional gaming in both West Virginia and Florida, such as approval of card and table games” and “legislation in Florida that reduced the slot machine tax rate” from 50 percent to 35 percent. He said his efforts resulted in “H&T increasing in value by tens of millions of dollars.”
H&T’s suit also states Mardi Gras’ damages were Adkins’ responsibility because “oversight was poor, and the roof of the racetrack came off during Hurricane Irma because it was incorrectly installed under Adkins’s direction.”
