I wrote back, asking the company to clarify that last part. How then was Brian Culwell affiliated with the company?
"Mr. Culwell's primary responsibility includes scouting new locations for the company," Gray responded through his public relations firm.
A recent
Inc.com article identifies Brian Culwell as the CEO of fast-growing Gold and Silver Buyers, Inc. Culwell has claimed to the
Houston Press that he is neither an officer nor a director of Gold and Silver Buyers.
Barry Sigman
Brian Culwell has been a burr under Houston Better Business Bureau chief Dan Parson's saddle for years. Ten years ago, Parsons had bulging files full of complaints about Culwell's travel and jewelry sales businesses. More recently, Parsons says Gold and Silver Buyers attempted to claim BBB membership without bothering to join.
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I then pointed out a March 2011 Houston Chronicle article that stated that Brian and Amelia Culwell "founded Gold & Silver Buyers" in 2008. The story went on to state that "the local couple began hiring and training appraisers and in August 2008 leased space inside an H-E-B in Copperfield for their first store. In addition, they own the Galleria-area refinery, whose location they don't want disclosed for security reasons."
The story went on to state that it was Brian and Amelia Culwell who hired Gray to run the company for them.
After reading all of that, I had a couple more questions. "Someone with the power to hire a President and COO is seldom a mere real estate scout," I wrote. "The way that report reads, Mr. Gray is an employee of his daughter and son-in-law. Is that not the case? Could Mr. Gray fire either of the Culwells?"
At that point, Gray directed me to his original statement.
A few days later, after I searched for "Bryan" Culwell instead of Brian, I found another story on Inc.com's Web site. Gold and Silver Buyers was touted as one of America's Top 10 companies by growth rate, and Culwell was interviewed and photographed in his position as company CEO. I sent the link to that story back to their PR firm and have yet to hear back.
I also asked some of Gold and Silver Buyers' celebrity endorsers what they knew about Culwell's past. Mickey Gilley never responded. Michael Berry called back and said he was shocked to learn about Culwell's criminal record. He said he would have a private investigator check him out and that he would get back to us after that. So far he has not. As of mid-September, the testimonials of both Berry and Gilley remain on the Gold and Silver Buyers Web site.
We also had wanted to know what H-E-B thought about renting space to a guy with a past like Brian Culwell's. I sent their spokesman a letter detailing Culwell's criminal history. I got no response from H-E-B at first. Then I was notified that Culwell and Gold and Silver Buyers, Inc. were suing me personally.
Culwell's suit contends that my e-mail to H-E-B constituted defamation of character, libel, business disparagement and negligence — specifically cited were my questions to H-E-B about Culwell's involvement with DreamKids (for which I erroneously believed he had been sent to prison), Lemerond's investigation into his travel sites, and an unexecuted, six-figure judgment hanging over Culwell's head stemming from the Heights property case.
The suit also claims that Culwell is not "an officer or director of [Gold and Silver Buyers]." According to the suit, he is simply "a member in a Texas limited liability company which has an ownership interest" in the company.
And in truth, I had been mistaken when I asked H-E-B if they were aware he had gone to prison after defrauding people in the DreamKids case. In fact, he had gone to prison for getting Delores Hawkins, a stroke-addled and heavily medicated old lady, to give him power of attorney over her affairs, then using that document to deed her property to a man whom he owed money, who was then left holding the bag when Culwell was found to have criminally misused that document. The DreamKids case was dismissed in all this criminal procedure traffic and so Culwell was never convicted of those particular charges. Culwell was already in federal custody when the Hawkins criminal verdict came down; in 2003, he was found to have violated the terms of his probation in a 1995 bank fraud case.
I corrected myself in a second letter to H-E-B. I told them I had been mixed up about why Culwell had gone to jail and pinpointed the exact causes — the theft case and the federal probation revocation. I also told them that I was in possession of an official state document indicating that Brian and Amelia Culwell were listed as the sole directors of Gold and Silver Buyers, Inc., on the date the company was founded and that the document further identified Graymeiren Holdings, LLC as that company's registered agent.
H-E-B declined to comment, saying it was not a party to the suit.
_____________________
Brian Culwell graduated from Spring Westfield High School in 1989. He spent a grand total of 30 days in the 1990s free and clear of the criminal justice system. For all but that single month, he was either on bond, behind bars or on some form of supervised release.
On January 31, 1990, Culwell was arrested and charged with burglary of a building. While Culwell was out on bail for that case, on July 19, 1990, the State of Texas filed civil suit against Culwell personally and in his role as agent for a partnership called Chrystelle, accusing Culwell of running a direct-mail scam in which people were promised big awards in return for purchasing $397 worth of cosmetics from a catalog. In October of 1991, an interlocutory default judgment was signed against Culwell for his role in that operation; the 157th State District Court ruled that the whole thing was a scam, and Culwell and some of his cohorts were ordered to pay civil penalties of $10,000 and attorney fees of $6,125 and to make restitution of $19,886.37.
