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Location: Manchester, New Hampshire, United States

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Andy Martin exposes corrupt “journalism” in Colebrook, New

New Hampshire corruption fighter Andy Martin exposes local media
corruption in Colebrook, New Hampshire and explains how New
Hampshire Attorney General Michael Delaney schemed to reward
two corrupt real estate speculators, Daniel Hebert and Daniel
Dagesse, Jr., with a crooked deal to destroy America’s historic
White Mountains hotel The Balsams.

Offices of Andy Martin
Manchester, NH 03104
Tel. (866) 706-2639
Fax (866) 707-2639

Letters to the Editor
News and Sentinel
Colebrook, NH 03576
via fax (603) 237-5060

Re: Article concerning The Balsams

I am responding to the misrepresentations and distortions in your article about my lawsuit involving The Balsams hotel. It would be helpful if in the course of publishing lies and distortions (which I assume are part of your “independence”) you also provided your readers with the facts.

I have received a lot of confused contacts from your readers, all of whom have been misled by your article concerning my lawsuit in Concord.

First, for the past several years the Neil Tillotson Trust has been mismanaged and corrupted by “trustees” who were serving their own interests instead of the interests of the trust established by Mr. Tillotson. Mr. Tillotson left tens of millions of dollars in trust for the benefit of people in the North Country. Instead of benefiting the North Country the trustees have used their power over the Tillotson assets to injure local residents.

The “trustees” originally “sold” The Balsams in 2011 to a “buyer” who paid no down payment and who fired the staff before taking ownership. At the time, in August, 2011, The Balsams was a world class hotel with world class facilities and a world class staff that was serving a loyal clientele. In a difficult economy The Balsams was doing comparatively well financially and supporting perhaps 1,000 people in the North Country.

Instead of preserving the “going concern” value of the hotel the trustees abruptly closed the hotel and terminated the hotel’s approximately 300 full and part-time employees. Nevertheless, the physical facilities remained intact and The Balsams could have been reopened within a few days.

In November, 2011 the trustees then entered into a secret sale with a couple of Coos County real estate hucksters. The Attorney General, who is supposed to protect the public by reviewing the contract, protected the interests of crooked insiders and speculators. The request for approval of the sale by the Attorney General was filed on Thanksgiving eve, and approved, secretly, in four days.

I filed a Right To Know Law request with the Attorney General. The AG refused to produce any of the “sale” documents. I filed a lawsuit in Merrimack County Superior Court. The Superior Court Justice agreed with me and ordered the AG to turn over files and records involving the “sales.” The AG refused to turn over the complete files, in defiance of a court order. Why was there no mention of this court order in your “news” article?

In the meantime the hotel had been turned over to Daniel Hebert and Daniel Dagesse, two Colebrook people (so I suppose you have a local bias in their favor, notwithstanding their unethical conduct, and against me, despite the fact I am the only one working to preserve local North Country jobs).

As soon as Hebert/Dagesse took control of The Balsams they refused to reopen the hotel, which could have been reopened for the winter season, and they took steps to make it impossible for the hotel to ever be reopened. They stripped all of the hotel's interior assets and auctioned off the contents, so that the hotel was effectively destroyed as a going concern.

More importantly, the Attorney General had approved a fiduciary “sale” to two speculators (Hebert and Dagesse) who purchased the property without the financial resources to remodel the hotel. The claim that Hebert and Dagesse have or had plans to “remodel and reopen” is a fraud. Hebert and Dagesse were intentionally involved in a “pump and dump” real estate scam. Hebert and Dagesse promptly sold off the hotel contents, and collected real estate easement cash, so they now have no meaningful investment in The Balsams property at this time. They are trying to resell the hotel for a quick $5 million profit. Why don't you report that? Or don’t you know what is happening in Coos County? Those are the unpleasant facts.

The potential “profit” legally belongs to the people of the North Country. It was stolen from them by Lynch, Delaney, Hebert and Dagesse.

Ask yourself: who would buy a multi-million dollar property without any cash to begin the remodeling? Who would buy a property without having lined up the financing in advance? A person who planned to resell, that's who. A real estate speculator who had no intention of remodeling and reopening, that’s who. Hebert and Dagesse’s plan was always to pull their cash out by liquidating the contents of the hotel and then selling off easements, so they could turn around and market the property at a massive profit to themselves.

Who got shafted in this real estate scam? Why the beneficiaries
of the Neil Tillotson Trust, that’s who. The little people.  The working people. The people of the North Country that Neil Tillotson loved.

The only person working to protect the working people of the
North Country is me. But you would never get that impression
from your biased and unbalanced story.

The hotel will never be remodeled under Hebert and Dagesse. They
admit they don’t have the money. They are nothing frauds and speculators who abused the sweat-and-blood of local employees for their own personal gain. They could have opened the hotel last December if their intention was to reopen and remodel. Hotels such as The Breakers in Palm Beach and the Waldorf-Astoria in New York have remodeled while remaining open and not firing their employees. Those are the facts.

Maybe “The News and Sentinel” should try providing your readers
with the truth and the facts, instead of trying to distort and misrepresent my half century of unblemished efforts to successfully fight political corruption and to expose dishonest public officials such as Attorney General Michael Delaney and Governor John Lynch. Near as I can tell you don’t report the “news” and you are not much of a “sentinel.”

You should also advise your readers that your article on me was
written without any effort to contact me for comment. That is a highly unprofessional style of journalism. The people of the North Country are being short-changed in more ways than one.

Andy Martin

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