Bobby Lee Peavler
Bobby Lee Peavler
Bobby Lee Peavler is the former CFO of Celadon Group.
Education
Bobby Lee Beavler graduated from Franklin College with a bachelor's in Accounting. [1]
Career
Just out of college, Beavler worked as an accountant at DFAS for six months. He went on to work as a tax accountant at DeWitt & Shrader, PC for a couple of years. His next gig was assistant controller for Celadon Group. [1]
Beavler worked his way up to vice president of accounting after six years of working there.
From 2011-2018, he worked through a series of roles that culminated in senior vice president of finance.
He went from controller, to vice president, principal accounting officer, to his penultimate role of executive vice president, chief financial officer.[1]
Indictments
On December 5th 2019, Celadon Group's CFO Bobby Lee Beavler and COO William Eric Meek were arrested in connection to a fraud scheme that took shareholders for more than $60 million. Four days later, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and announced they were going out of business, leaving nearly 4,000 people without jobs. [2]
The two men were arrested on nine counts each, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and conspiracy to make false statements to the company's accountants and falsify records. Peavler was also charged with two extra counts of making false statements to the company's accountants. [2]
What Happened?
The indictment alleges that Beavler, Meeks and others in the company knew by 2016 that the company was losing tens of millions of dollars due to a slowdown in the trucking market, mechanical problems and other factors. In order to conceal the losses they began inflating invoices of older used trucks that they traded for new ones; selling trucks to a dealer which were later paid back after the quarter; and essentially lying to auditors about the transactions. [3]
Peavler is also accused of directing a senior executive to delete incriminating emails after auditors had requested all relevant documents.
After the information went public the company experienced a $60,000,000 loss in a single day.
CEO Paul Svinland released the following statement: [2]
"We have diligently explored all possible options to restructure Celadon and keep business operations ongoing, however, a number of legacy and market headwinds made this impossible to achieve.
Celadon has faced significant costs associated with a multi-year investigation into the actions of former management, including the restatement of financial statements.
When combined with the enormous challenges in the industry, and our significant debt obligations, Celadon was unable to address our significant liquidity constraints through asset sales or other restructuring strategies."