Founder of Bankrupt Photographic Film Company Ordered to Repay $4.4 Million

Boca Raton-based PSI Industries, a family-owned business that went public in September 1996, sold photographic film stock and later disposable cameras. In July 1999, PSI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The following year a liquidation plan was confirmed and Barry R. Shear was named liquidating trustee. After months of an internal investigation, Shear filed a complaint against several former PSI executives to recover assets allegedly defrauded from the company.

Plaintiff attorney Bruce A. Katzen, a member of Miami-based Kluger, Peretz, Kaplan & Berlin, represented the liquidating trustee in a four-day bench-trial. According to a report in the Daily Business Review, Katzen argued that "the defendants artificially inflated PSI's net worth, received millions in loans based on this artificially high valuation, then drained those funds from the company through a variety of fraudulent disbursements."

In the case of Barry R. Shear, as liquidating trustee for PSI Industries Inc., v. Carol Seminara, Mirco Vietti, Dominick Seminara, Lisa Seminara Davidson, and Debbie Vietti, Judge Thomas Utschig found that the defendants looted assets from PSI as a result of multiple frauds. As a result, the defendants were liable for $4.7 million, with PSI founder Dominick Seminara responsible for $4.4 million.