Lawyers for Stanley Black & Decker Inc. say the former finance chief at a payments processor from which the tool maker is trying to recover money previously faced a civil lawsuit over alleged bogus expense reports and has done prison time, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A lawyer representing Stanley Black & Decker in the bankruptcy of IPS Worldwide LLC told a bankruptcy judge on Thursday that it is “pretty obvious that there has been fraud, dishonesty, incompetence and gross mismanagement at the top” at the freight-shipping services provider, where the tool maker says $50 million of its money has gone missing. Mark Bloom, a Greenberg Traurig LLP lawyer representing Stanley Black & Decker, told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Jennemann that his client had uncovered a 2001 California judgment against former IPS Chief Financial Officer Michael McNett, in which he was ordered to pay $4 million to a previous employer. McNett was accused of, among other things, submitting false payment vouchers for personal expenses and cash-advance requests.
