Joplin businessman, employees face $25M fraud charge

A 43-count grand jury indictment was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for Kansas in Wichita accusing Gary Hall, 66, of Joplin, and his associates of defrauding the state of Oklahoma and American Indian tribes of $25 million in tax revenue.

Hall is the president and owner of Galena, Kan.-based Sunflower Supply Co. Inc. The company was named as a defendant along with two other firms owned by Hall: Discount Tobacco Warehouse Inc. and Rebel Industries Inc., according to a U.S. Department of Justice, District of Kansas, news release.

Seven of Hall's employees also are charged. The employees named in the indictment are Thomas Anthony Grantham, of Joplin; Keith Dion Noe, of Joplin; Justin Boyes, of Galena; Danny Ray Davis, of Galena; Jeremy Wayne Hooker, of Salina, Okla.; James William Coble, of Galena, Kan.; and Justice Michael Berry, of Joplin.

According to the indictment, Kansas and Oklahoma require every cigarette pack to carry a tax stamp. In Oklahoma, the tax varies from about 6 cents a pack up to $1.03 a pack depending on where the cigarettes are sold.

The indictment alleges that Hall and the other defendants conspired to defraud Oklahoma and the tribes that share its cigarette tax revenue by stamping cigarettes for sale at smoke shops in lower tax rate areas when in fact the cigarettes were sold at smoke shops in higher tax rate areas, the release said.

The government is seeking money from Hall and the other defendants as well as a Hawker Beechcraft Model 4000 jet owned by another of Hall's companies, a 2006 BMW auto, a 2007 Chevrolet van, and real estate in Joplin, Galena and Las Vegas.

In May, Joplin-based Freeman Health System and Freeman Foundation accepted a $4.5 million gift from Hall and his wife, Donna, and renamed its six-story, $50 million tower, completed in 2007, as the Gary and Donna Hall Tower. The gift was the largest ever received by the foundation.

In June, Hawker Beechcraft Corp. delivered its first Hawker 4000 super-midsized business jet to the Halls during a ceremony at the company's Wichita facility. The company describes the Hawker 4000 as the "world's most advanced business jet."

According to FlightAware, a Web-based flight tracking service, the plane was scheduled to leave Joplin Regional Airport at 8:40 a.m. Friday morning for Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas. The flight, however, was apparently cancelled. The four-hour, 59-minute flight was showed as delayed on the site as of 11:55 a.m. Friday, but it was no longer listed on the site as of 2:45 p.m.[[In-content Ad]]