Moe: No racetrack investors list

The operator of Spokane Raceway Park claims he can’t produce the list of several hundred people who invested more than $2 million in the racetrack in the 1970s, a Superior Court judge was told Friday.

Orville Moe made the revelation recently when asked a series of questions under oath as part of a lawsuit brought by a group of angry investors, their attorney Gregory Lockwood told Judge Robert Austin.

Lockwood asked the court earlier this year to order Moe to turn over a list of people who bought “A” and “B” shares in Washington Motorsports. The shares ranged in purchase price from $500 to $10,000 in the mid-1970s.

The court has twice ordered Moe and his attorney, Carl Oreskovich, to produce the “partnership register.”

The investors also want to see a list of any subsequent stock transfers, including shares that have been purchased back at discounted prices by Moe and his daughter.

“He says he has no records of partnership registry, no records of anything,” Lockwood told the judge.

“I don’t agree with that,” said Moe’s attorney, jumping to his feet in the courtroom on Friday.

Oreskovich previously has said Moe turned over a list of investors’ names, but the plaintiffs’ attorney said that document was nothing more than a mailing list, with no breakdown of individual stock purchases.

Moe didn’t attend Friday’s hearing, but a half-dozen investors were there, hoping to see some progress in their year-old legal challenge.

“What’s the holdup here?” investor Earl Wham asked aloud in the courtroom.

The judge said he was ready to hear arguments on motions by the plaintiffs to add new defendants and for a court-ordered audit of Spokane Raceway Park.

Then Oreskovich asked for more time because the plaintiffs filed additional legal documents on Thursday.

The “limited partner” plaintiffs want to add Orville Moe and his wife, Deonne, as defendants in the lawsuit that initially named only Spokane Raceway Park, the general partnership controlled by Orville Moe.

Oreskovich said he will resist the plaintiffs’ attempts to add additional defendants at this point.

The judge postponed a hearing on that legal question until Oct. 1.

The judge scheduled another hearing on Nov. 5 where the plaintiffs will ask for a partial summary judgment that would result in the independent audit of Spokane Raceway Park.

Investors Donald Materne and Ed Torrison, two of more than 500 people who bought shares in Washington Motorsports Inc., are trying to oust Moe as “general partner” of the mile-square Spokane Raceway Park auto racing complex in Airway Heights.

The shareholder legal action is being organized by Troy Moe, Orville Moe’s nephew.

Orville Moe’s brothers, Earl and Maynard Moe, both of Spokane, voted off the board of directors of Spokane Raceway Park, are now siding with the dissidents who say they’ve never seen a penny of return on their 30-year-old investments.

Because Orville Moe can’t produce the “partnership registry,” the investors suing him now will ask for the court-ordered, independent audit of the multimillion-dollar business operation, Lockwood said.

The investors hope that an audit for the past three years will show where the money went from operations at Spokane Raceway Park, including Friday Night Street Racing and the AHRA World Finals drag races, Lockwood said.

LeMasters and Daniels, the accounting firm that has prepared tax returns and shortened “compilation audits” of Spokane Raceway Track, has refused to turn those records over to anyone other than Orville Moe.

An official of the accounting firm, Dominick Zamora, was named to the board by Orville Moe and Robert Kovacevich, a Spokane tax attorney. Kovacevich is Orville Moe’s business partner in U.S. Fast Foods, a subsidiary company that sells food and drinks at Spokane Raceway Park.