Louisiana Voice

Richard Sharp says he was threatened and coerced into a plea bargain in a court action in order to get out of jail and the cast of characters surrounding his case back in 2015 would seem to support that.The first meeting of GDH International shareholders was held on that same date. Sharp, a member, attended by telephone.

The initial directors of the corporation named at that meeting included:

• Riecke: Chief Executive Officer
• Bruce Cucchiara: Chief Financial Officer
• Sharp: Chief Operating Officer
• Dudley Geigerman, III: Director of Housing
• Daniel E. Buras, Jr.: Director

Cucchiara, who previously served as President of Resource Bank in Mandeville, had been prohibited by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) from participation in banking in July 2005. He would be murdered in New Orleans East on April 24, 2012, less than a year after formation of the GDH operation. His killer has never been found.

Another officer, Geigerman, has been linked to organized crime figure Anthony Tusa, who in turn, was affiliated with Carlos Marcello. Geigerman’s grandfather was New York gangster Frank Costello’s brother-in-law and the elder Geigerman worked as a collector for Costello’s slot machines installed in bars across Louisiana.

Sharp, in a federal lawsuit against Riecke, the Covington Police Department, and others in October 2012, indicated that he agreed to the plea bargain and made those concessions under duress.

Sharp filed his own lawsuit in federal court in Louisiana’s Southern District on Oct. 8, 2012, naming Riecke, 22^nd Judicial District Judge Peter Garcia, then-District Attorney Walter Reed (another unsavory character in this drama who would later go to prison on unrelated charges), GDH International, and several others, claiming collusion on the part of the defendants to extort money and property from him.

First of all, he said, the arrest warrant was signed by Garcia, who Sharp said signed an injunctive relief order attaching and seizing Sharp’s personal property in Plaquemines Parish in order to prevent Sharp from making bail which resulted in his being held for 81 days on what he says were “fabricated charges” despite an apparent conflict of interest on Garcia’s part.

Garcia was not present for Sharp’s plea but was involved in the certification of Riecke’s civil suit against him and did not allow Sharp to have an attorney present when he certified the lawsuit, Sharp said.

Garcia failed to recuse himself, Sharp said, even though he had a close personal relationship with Riecke and Cucchiara and had officiated at Riecke’s wedding on Aug. 22, 1998.

Garcia and Cucchiara also had purchased property together, Sharp said, further solidifying the cozy relationship between the judge and the defendants and seemingly stacking the deck against Sharp.

Sharp also contended in a formal complaint to the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana on Aug. 13, 2012, that Garcia held ex parte conversations with Riecke and associates about Sharp’s criminal and civil matters.

Predictably, the Judiciary Commission did not act on Sharp’s complaint.

Even more ominous, Sharp claimed in his petition that he was threatened with direct physical harm “in order to extort his consent to settle the civil suit they had filed against him.”

Sharp said that Riecke and Geigerman visited him in jail and told him they would drop all the criminal charges if he would settle the civil case in their favor. “Riecke and Geigerman told Sharp that if he did not sign the settlement agreement, he would not get out of jail and hinted that Sharp just might be harmed while incarcerated,” Sharp’s lawsuit said.

The detective who appeared before Judge Garcia to seek the arrest warrant on Sharp was Stephen Culotta who would experience his own problems after becoming chief of police for the city of Covington. Culotta resigned as chief in May 2021 when his deputy chief, Joseph “Trey” Mahon was arrested on five counts of child pornography. He said his resignation had nothing to do with Mahon’s case.

Garcia and Reed’s motion for dismissal from Sharp’s lawsuit was granted in a 16-page ruling by 22^nd Judicial District Judge Sarah Vance on Nov. 8, 2013.

Five months later, she “discovered” that her husband, an attorney with the New Orleans law firm Jones Walker, “has represented and continues to represent GDH International in bankruptcy litigation in Texas, which involves parties in this case, as well as subject mater that could overlap with an issue in this case.”

Having made that late “discovery,” she recused herself and ordered the clerk of court to reallot the case to another judge.

In another head-scratcher there’s the case of E-Housing Solutions, LLC, et al versus GDH International filed in 22^nd JDC on February 19, 2016, which included the following default judgment claims:

• E-Housing Solutions v. GDH International: $32,204.25;
• GDH Housing Solutions v. GDH International: $23,017.50;
• Global Disaster Housing v. GDH International: $48,708;
• Dudley Geigerman v. GDH International: $39,636;
• Jared Riecke v. GDH International: $36,396.

GDH International, of course, is the company with which Sharp was involved with Riecke, Cucchiara, Geigerman, and a Covington lawyer named Daniel Buras, Jr.

And here’s where it gets a bit sticky and you’ll probably need a program to decipher it all. Records on file with the Secretary of State’s office show:

• Dudley Geigerman and Patrick Gros are the only E-Housing officers and Jared Riecke is the only officer of GDH International. He is also GDH’s registered agent.
• JD2 Industries, Inc. is the only officer of GDG Housing but Jared Riecke and Step Three Ventures are listed as officers of JD2. Gros is the registered agent and an officer for Step Three Ventures.
• E-Housing Solutions and Iron Construction are the listed officers of Global Disaster Housing and Jared Riecke is the registered agent for Global Disaster Housing and is both the registered agent and the only officer for Iron Construction.
• David Buras or the Buras Law Firm, LLC, meanwhile, is the registered agent for E-Housing Solutions, LLC, GDH Housing, and JD2 Industries;
• Geigerman, Riecke or a company with Riecke’s name on it shows up in the corporate records of each of the entities above.

A default judgment is when a defendant does not bother to respond to the initial lawsuit which in this case, was filed on October 22, 2015.

But with everyone suing themselves, it’s not surprising that no one filed an answer.

But 22^nd JDC Judge Allison Penzato smelled a rat. Apparently suspecting a ruse of some sort in which the court would be complicit, she wrote in longhand across the face of the filing for the default judgment on March 17, 2016: “Denied – insufficient evidence. Oral testimony required.”

The intent of the legal maneuver by E-Housing, GDH, Riecke, et al, is unclear. Court awards in a case such as this one are not tax exempt, so a tax dodge can be ruled out, especially since the total of the sought-after judgments was only $180,000.

Again, the total of the judgments is comparatively small if the intent was to liquidate the assets of GDH International.

But, as the cheesy TV commercial says, there’s more.

On Feb. 29, less than two months before her revelation of a possible conflict, Judge Vance ruled on another matter involving a business associate of Riecke when she denied a motion by Slidell businessman Bay Ingram to quash five grand jury subpoenas issued in connection with a criminal investigation of Ingram’s attempt to defraud BP following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010 (more about that in our next installment).

Another litigation case demonstrated how risky doing business with Riecke can be.

Electrical Engineer Kenneth Dutruch was retained by letter dated Nov. 15, 2004, to act as “exclusive agent to secure a sale for SELA (Southeastern Louisiana Water & Sewerage Co.),” but the agreement ended up in court when Riecke failed to pay Dutruch after SELA was sold.

In a deposition taken on Aug. 9, 2011, Riecke was asked to read a sentence from the agreement which said, “Should a commitment to purchase be obtained by you or by us from any source you introduce, SELA agrees to pay your fee on the total amount of the sale price.”

Asked to read the next sentence, Riecke did so: “For these services, you are to be paid five percent of the total amount of the sale.”

On Jan. 13, 2010, SELA’s assets were sold to the parish of St. Tammany for a total price of $39 million, well below the $50 million to $55 million that Riecke wanted for the company but nevertheless a potential $1.95 million commission for Dutruch, a commission Riecke did not pay because, he said, the sale was consummated after the contract with Dutruch expired.

“So, in your view,” asked attorney Alex Peragine, “if an agent earning a commission working for you brings you a firm commitment to purchase, you fire him the next day, you close two weeks later, you don’t have to pay him? That’s your view, correct?”

Peragine asked Riecke later in the deposition if he recalled in January 2007, he offered Dutruch $500,000 at the closing of the deal “in an effort to renegotiate the contract that you signed in November 2004?”

Riecke said that he did attempt to renegotiate the contract because the price received for SELA was far below what he’d anticipated and because the sale to the parish wasn’t consummated until two years after Dutruch’s contract had expired.

The 22^nd JDC granted Riecke’s request for a summary judgment (dismissal), saying that Dutruch had failed to establish that his efforts were the procuring cause of the March 2010 sale of SELA’s assets. A three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the lower court decision, meaning Dutruch received nothing for his work.