Blixseth’s ‘hidden’ assets subject of reward

The Washington resident dismissed the reward as a sign of desperation ahead of a federal appellate court’s ruling on the Yellowstone Club bankruptcy and other appeals that Blixseth said could eliminate the creditors’ claims.

“So, I will better their ‘bounty offer,’ ” Blixseth said in an email from his Seattle home. “I will offer (a) 50 percent reward to anyone who can find any hidden assets of mine.”

A bankruptcy judge previously said Blixseth diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from a 2005 loan to the resort north of Yellowstone National Park for his personal use. The Yellowstone Club has been under new ownership since Blixseth left the resort in 2008 as it headed into bankruptcy.

Blixseth has spent years and millions of dollars fighting the club’s creditors in multiple court jurisdictions.

In June, a federal judge in California issued a $200 million civil judgment against Blixseth for fraudulently transferring money from the resort. In April, a federal judge in Montana ordered Blixseth to pay his creditors $41 million.

But Glasser said it was the discovery of Blixseth’s 2011 sale of a resort in Mexico that prompted the reward program. Attorneys for the creditors said Blixseth was deceiving the courts over his assets.

A federal judge ordered Blixseth to pay at least $13.8 million for violating a court order by selling the Tamarindo property in the state of Jalisco. Creditors’ attorneys called for his arrest for failing to pay.

“That was the impetus,” Glasser said. “Mr. Blixseth is saying all those funds are dissipated — $13 million. I don’t believe it.”

Blixseth said the goal of the liquidating trust is redirect attention from the creditors’ wrongdoing in the case. The trust aims to “ransack me and my financial ability to so badly I would give up and be bludgeoned into ineffectiveness in my pursuit of justice,” he said.