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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Tamarack suitor reportedly owes $350,000

A suitor of Idaho’s beleaguered Tamarack Resort owes a handful of companies more than $350,000 after he issued bad checks, failed to pay employees and stiffed contractors for work on his home, according to liens, police complaints and a lawsuit.

Copies of the bounced checks and the police report were obtained by The Associated Press. The documents showed that Matthew Hutcheson was being pursued by at least four parties for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Hutcheson, who wants to buy the central Idaho vacation getaway, was slapped in May with a $159,000 lien for Givens Construction’s work on his home near Boise, according to public documents. He also was hit with a separate $1,273 lien filed in August for landscaping work.

Last month, a man who worked for one of Hutcheson’s companies sued him in state court for $138,000 to compensate him for unpaid wages.

And Scott Turlington, a consultant hired by Hutcheson to help buy Tamarack, also filed a complaint with police in August after Hutcheson bounced checks totaling $51,000.

The resort 90 miles north of Boise collapsed in 2008 after majority owner Jean-Pierre Boespflug ran short of money to repay a $250 million construction loan from lenders including Zurich-based Credit Suisse Group. Boespflug has disappeared, the resort is nearing foreclosure, and Hutcheson hasn’t come up with the $40 million he offered for Tamarack.



Scott Maben
Scott Maben joined The Spokesman-Review in 2006. He currently is the Business Editor.

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