Making Metzger Pay Begins With Seizing Assets : Judicial: Investigators expect a cat-and-mouse game in collecting the $9-million judgment from the Fallbrook white supremacist and his organization.

Now that Tom Metzger and his white supremacist organization have been ordered to pay nearly $9 million for allegedly inciting the murder of an Ethiopian student in Portland, the victim’s family now faces a task that might be even more formidable, if not impossible.

Collecting it.

It’s unlikely that the Metzgers and the White Aryan Resistance--his organization to promote racial hate--have $9 million. Metzger lives in a modest Fallbrook home that isn’t worth much more than $100,000, according to some estimates. He drives two older cars, and from all appearances, his television repair business hasn’t made him a rich man. The business assets are counted in terms of satellite dishes and diagnostic equipment.

Accurate or not, the man cuts the image of the middle-class working guy, living unspectacularly.

But then, no one knows just how much Metzger and WAR are worth or if that ever can be determined. The organization, after all, collects the bulk of its revenue in cash or money orders, and it’s hard to tell how much of that money has been spent--or stashed away--or when and how more might be coming in.

State law says that whatever goes uncollected in 20 years will then remain beyond the grasp of the law.

“For 20 years, Tom Metzger and his son, John, are going to have me or someone else following them around with our hands out,” said James McElroy, the San Diego civil lawyer who is assisting civil rights attorney Morris Dees in collecting the award ordered on Monday by the Portland jury.

McElroy and other attorneys who specialize in collections concede that it doesn’t take the intelligence of a rocket scientist to hide personal assets and, specifically, cash when there is no record of receipt.

There is the cliche Swiss bank account, the offshore corporation, the safe box six feet beneath the garden--or a friend’s garden. A less intriguing but nearly as efficient option is to simply deposit the money in a bank account across a state line. By the time the judgment authorizing the seizure of assets is transferred to a court in that state, the account can be relocated to still another state, like some ongoing cat-and-mouse game.

The whole matter of collections--especially on megabuck judgments such as this--relies on the expertise of attorneys and private investigators, as well as the debtor’s honesty in identifying his assets when testifying under oath. And the collection is steeped in the reality that much, if not most, of the judgment will go uncollected, if it is ultimately determined that the money just isn’t there.

In what was cast as a major setback to the white supremacist movement, the jury awarded $12.5 million to the family of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant living in Portland whose head was split open by a baseball bat when he was attacked by skinheads in November, 1988.

The jury found that the two assailants who pleaded guilty in the slaying were incited by the Fallbrook-based Metzgers and WAR’s racial-hate campaign. Tom Metzger, 52, was ordered to pay $5 million in punitive damages; his son, John, 22--who heads WAR’s youthful skinhead faction--was ordered to pay $1 million; WAR was assessed $3 million, and each of the two skinheads were told to pay $500,000 each. Additionally, each of the five were told to pay 20% of the $2.5 million balance, which represented compensatory damages.

Because Metzger’s actions were found by the jury to be willful, wanton and malicious, he cannot duck behind bankruptcy to avoid the judgment.

Metzger--who was not criminally charged in the slaying--did not return messages left on his personal phone. But previously, he promised to continue WAR’s efforts. After the jury’s verdict last week, Metzger said the judgment elevated him as a martyr to white America and that, with nothing else to lose, he was freed to promote even more violence.

And in a tape-recorded message on his WAR telephone line, Metzger said:

“If Tom Metzger is in a house in Fallbrook, or an apartment or a shack or a tent in the mountains or the desert, it won’t significantly change anything. . . . The fight is a long way from over.”

His son, John, said after the verdict, “I take this personally as another trophy in our showcase. My only regret is that they only got me for $1 million.”

So what happens next?

The Portland judgment will be transferred to San Diego Superior Court so it can be executed locally. The necessary filing of documents is expected on Monday, McElroy said, and making the judgment a local matter is all but a rubber-stamp formality because of “sister state” laws.

Within several weeks, the two Metzgers will be subpoenaed to testify, under oath, as to their assets and those of WAR. Others familiar with Metzger’s money operations might be called as well.

Then, with a writ of execution signed by the judge, the San Diego County marshal’s office will seize whatever personal assets were identified--ranging from the television business equipment to a trailer used by Metzger at his rallies, to the cars.

Those items will likely be in authorities’ hands within weeks, to be sold at public auction.

The largest obvious Metzger asset is his small, two-story stucco home in Fallbrook that is worth about $100,000, according to McElroy and persons in Fallbrook familiar with real estate values.

Metzger previously tried to transfer the home to his wife, but McElroy stopped the transfer in court even before the Portland verdict.

The house will be formally appraised, a date set for its sale, and the marshal will host an auction with a minimum bid and other conditions for purchase. When it’s sold, the Metzger family has to move out. This should happen, McElroy said, within “the next several months.”

However, no matter how much money the house fetches, Metzger, under the state’s homestead laws, gets to keep $45,000.

A judge will also determine how much money Metzger makes at his television business--if he continues it--and decide how much of that income should be earmarked to pay off the judgment. Metzger will be allowed to keep some money to support himself and his wife.

If either Metzger or his son take a regular-paying job, 25% of their paychecks would be garnished. But the elder Metzger, since he is self-employed, has no such paycheck and his son--who reportedly most recently worked as a typist for a temporary service agency--is said to be unemployed now.

Theoretically, McElroy said, Metzger could be allowed to keep some of WAR’s continuing revenue. But the attorney said he doubted a judge would be so generous.

Getting WAR to pay its share of the judgement will be a more curious exercise, McElroy said. Even if its assets are determined--and Metzger claims they are only phones and a copier machine--there is still the matter of contributions being sent to WAR’s post office box in Fallbrook.

Since a state court ruling doesn’t give the victor the right to seize federal property--the postal box--whatever funds that come in will have to be seized some other way, McElroy said.

How?

“There are a number of creative possibilities,” he said. “One is to create a receivership and actually take over WAR, and then the receiver would have the key to the box. Another is a ‘turnover order,’ which would tell Metzger that he could only, for instance, go to the box once a week--and then we’d have someone there at the same time, and we would inventory what’s in the mail. He could have what was his, and we would take what was ours.”

Those kinds of details would be resolved in the local court.

Confusing the picture, however, is Metzger’s attempt to solicit financial contributions to help pay for the cost of his appeal. Not only does he want $4,000 to buy a copy of the trial transcripts, but if he is to appeal, he needs to post a bond equaling the amount of the judgment.

Metzger has asked that donations be sent--in checks or money order--to an associate in Fallbrook. It is unclear whether those funds can be taken to meet the judgment, but McElroy would like to think so.

“We’ll go after any money being sent to benefit WAR, no matter who it’s being sent to,” the attorney said. “We’d like contributions to WAR to end up helping to compensate our client--and we hope his contributors know that.”

But Miles Grant, a collections attorney, said that might not be so easy. “If the money belongs to one of the judgment debtors, then you can grab it,” he said. “And if it’s being sent to somebody else but is ultimately intended to go to WAR, you can grab that, too. But it’s an interesting question, of whether you can take money that is intended to pay for court costs. The court would have to decide.”

Tracking down WAR and Metzger bank accounts where checks have been deposited should not prove difficult. Collection attorneys note that investigators need only write checks to an individual or organization, and wait for the return of the cancelled check, to track its paper path through the banks.

Finding cash--if there is any--might prove more troublesome because of the various ways it can be physically hidden, Grant said.

“You hire private investigators, but that’s tough going when you’ve got a guy like Metzger, who is dangerous to begin with,” Grant said. “And if you think friends are hiding the money for him, you can subpoena them to court and ask them what they know of his assets. They can either tell the truth or risk a perjury conviction. You hope someone may slip up.

“But I don’t think he’s got a lot of money hidden,” Grant added.

McElroy isn’t so sure. Trial evidence showed that as much as $14,000 in WAR receipts were deposited to his TV-repair business bank account in 1988 and 1989, and Metzger acknowledged on the stand that 70% of WAR’s contributions were cash.

“He supports his family from his hate business--and it’s a profit making enterprise for him,” McElroy said. “The more violence, the more publicity, the more young people he gets riled up, the more followers he gets, the more money he makes.”

McElroy says he’s not sure how much money, ultimately, will be gotten from Metzger, his son and his organization. “We don’t know what he’ll be doing in 5 or 10 years. We know that, in the next year, we’ll at least get his house and his obvious assets. We’ll know more after we have the debtor’s exam.

“Our top priority is to compensate the family of the decedent. We want to give them some money. A side benefit of that is that, if we can shut down Mr. Metzger’s hate business, he’ll no longer be preying on these 15- and 16-year-old skinheads. He won’t be selling hate to them, and reaping the rewards from their violent acts.

“If he goes underground, then we succeed from that standpoint. But if he just moves somewhere else--to the desert or whatever--and he’s still publishing his newspaper telling people where to send money, we’ll know that and we’ll be there, whether he’s in Maine or Alaska or California.”