The historic rise and fall of St. Louis-based US Fidelis is a tale so legendary that the media keeps retelling it – often with the help of our bankruptcy co-chair Dave Warfield, who had a front-row seat for the legal drama as lead counsel for the creditors' committee in the US Fidelis bankruptcy.
Dave's latest rapt audience is the listeners of NPR's Planet Money podcast. The popular financial podcast's April 9 episode, "About Your Extended Warranty," features Dave extensively in the first half of the episode, available from the NPR website or wherever you get your podcasts.
Dave talked to Planet Money reporter Amanda Aronczyk via Zoom for 90 minutes in late March for the episode.
As he did for CNBC's "American Greed" show in 2014, Dave talks in the podcast about the framework of US Fidelis' marketing schemes and the company's sales tactics for locking consumers into vehicle service contracts that in the end provided little coverage. He also discusses how the extravagant spending of US Fidelis' criminal co-founders, brothers Darain and Cory Atkinson — resulted in a Chapter 11 case that eventually recovered tens of millions of dollars to satisfy consumer claims and the claims of other creditors.
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