Debt collectors are pursuing former dot-com investor William Lederer, who faces a foreclosure suit on his Lake Forest, IL estate and claims for almost $12.5 million in unpaid federal taxes.
Illinois-based American Chartered Bank sued last month to collect more than $6 million from Mr. Lederer and his wife on their 7-bedroom, 6-bathroom home at 620 Lake Road in north suburban Lake Forest, IL. A $6.2-million loan from the bank issued in 2007 fell into default last June, the lawsuit alleges.
The complaint, filed July 13 in Lake County Circuit Court, does not say what triggered the default. The home is listed for sale at $6.5 million.
The bank isn’t the only one trying to collect from Mr. Lederer, best known as the founder of online art and framing retailer Art.com Inc. The IRS filed a tax lien against him last November seeking almost $12 million in unpaid taxes from 2000. A separate lien was filed in May seeking almost $420,000 in unpaid taxes from 2007.
The number listed for Mr. Lederer’s company, Lake Forest-based Minotaur Capital Management Inc., is disconnected. He was reached at the New York office of TNS Media Intelligence, where he is currently employed, but declined to comment.
Mr. Lederer hit it big in 1999, when he sold Art.com to Getty Images Inc. for $115 million. In 1996 he founded Minotaur, a venture-capital firm that invested in Internet startups. The firm was dissolved in November 2007.
Mr. Lederer’s other investments included Divine Inc., a Chicago-based publicly held Internet conglomerate started by Andrew “Flip” Filipowski that collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. More recently, Mr. Lederer’s Socrates Media launched two Web sites aimed at real estate investors, RentSlicer.com and CompleteLandlord.com.
“He’s a very smart, talented guy,” says Mark Koulogeorge, partner at Chicago venture-capital firm MK Capital Co., who says he has looked at deals with Mr. Lederer in the past. “He’ll be successful again, but you never bat a thousand.”
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