The article linked from the post that the settlement was done.
http://dressage-news.com/2018/03/05/caroline-roffman-horse-sale-lawsuit-settled-case-being-dismissed/
The lawsuit stated, per the article
"Ots, at defendant’s direction, instructed Peslar to wire transfer the purchase price of $900,000 for Fabrege to Peter’s bank account.
"Peter retained $10,000 from the funds transferred by Peslar as a fee for use of its bank account to funnel the Fabrege sale money and sent the remaining funds received from Peslar, $890,000, to Roffman.
"Peter never bought Fabrege or paid any money for Fabrege.
"Defendants knew Peter never owned Fabrege and used Peter as subterfuge for defendants to make an illegal profit from the sale of Fabrege.
OK, must revise my post way back there, outlining the apparent transaction flow. Based on the information in the article about the settlement stating that Peter Eekman of Belgium was paid $10k by Roffman to use his bank account for the funds flow. Honestly, to me this makes it an even darker story.
The Money: The Plan
Peslar > Eekman > Tarjan
The Money: The Actual Flow when funds didn’t flow as quickly as anticipated, and Tarjan wanted the money before sending the papers.
Peslar > Eekman … hold up of transfer … so Roffman directly fronted the money to Tarjan
It is not explained if Eekman transferred the funds directly to Tarjan, but funds were held due to ‘terrorist’ concerns, and then transmitted later to Tarjan. If so, at that point Tarjan would have had to refund the payment sent to her by Roffman when Eekman’s funds didn’t turn up. Or maybe Eekman’s funds were not sent, stopped by the sender, or whatever. A detail, but one that is a little bit interesting in terms of trustworthiness and follow-through.
The Title - What people thought, and what was true, were presented differently to different people.
Tarjan was told it was Tarjan > Eekman.
Peslar was told it was Eekman > Peslar.
Eekman, in fact, enabled the money flow, but the article states that he never had ownership of the horse.
If so, the true path would seem to be Tarjan > Peslar, but I wonder if the papers would support that since, at the time, neither end of that transaction was aware of the other.
What the papers say would be interesting. The paperwork passed through Roffman’s father’s hands between the seller Tarjan sending it, and the buyer Peslar receiving it.
Ironically, the person whose money funded this entire thing, Bethany Peslar, seems to have the least standing to make any recovery. In her case she agreed to buy a horse for $900k, and she did. Only if she had some sort of verifiable agreement with Ots and/or Roffman to act in her best interests in finding a horse for her, and/or if they misrepresented the horse to her, would she have been wronged, legally-speaking, I think. I’m not a lawyer, just speculating.
We don’t seem to have heard from Ms. Peslar. She seems to be the only one whose story hasn’t at least partially found its way to the public.
