$2M Geist home at heart of Drive Planning legal battle

Nearly a year after a federal judge placed Georgia-based financial firm Drive Planning LLC into receivership, the court-appointed receiver is still wrestling to gain control of the $2 million Geist mansion where the now-defunct firm’s managing partner lives.

Drive was placed into receivership last August after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued the firm, alleging that Drive was at the center of a $370 million-plus Ponzi scheme. That case is pending in U.S. District Court in Georgia.

At the time, Drive had three offices: its headquarters in Atlanta; a Fishers location run by the firm’s managing partner, Gerardo Linarducci; and a location in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Drive’s founder and CEO, Russell Todd Burkhalter, lived.

Now, the receiver’s goal for Linarducci’s home—and a commercial site in Fishers that Drive acquired in 2022, along with numerous other Drive-related properties in other states—is to sell the properties, generating cash that can ultimately go back to the nationwide network of more than 2,500 investors who the SEC says lost money in Drive.

Court records show that Drive’s court-appointed receiver, Miami attorney Kenneth Murena, has already sold a few of the properties and is working to sell numerous others, including homes, business properties, a yacht and other assets the receiver says are owned by Drive and/or purchased with money from Drive.

So far, Linarducci has resisted the receiver’s requests to give up the 6,935-square-foot home, which sits on a 0.7-acre parcel that backs up to Geist Reservoir.

A new ‘roadblock’

The case gained another legal wrinkle when Linarducci filed for bankruptcy protection June 27. That case is pending in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Indiana.

Linarducci did not respond to multiple voicemails, texts and emails seeking comment for this story. Likewise, IBJ got no response to emails and voicemails sent to Linarducci’s bankruptcy attorney, Harley Means of Kroger Gardis & Regas LLP, and to another Kroger Gardis & Regas attorney who is defending Linarducci in a separate suit filed last year by two Drive investors.

And Linarducci’s bankruptcy filing doesn’t yet present a full picture of his financial situation.

The initial filing indicates that Linarducci estimates his assets at between $1 million and $10 million, with estimated debt of $500,000 to $1 million.

As of July 21, that filing did not yet include other key information, including the composition and dollar value of those assets and liabilities. The court has given Linarducci until July 28 to provide that information

But what is certain is that the bankruptcy filing adds another obstacle to the receiver’s efforts to take control of the home currently owned by Linarducci and his wife.

A bankruptcy filing creates what is called an automatic stay—if there are other legal proceedings against the debtor, those cases are put on pause while the bankruptcy case progresses.

Murena told IBJ via email that his efforts to take control of Linarducci’s home cannot proceed “unless and until the bankruptcy court lifts the automatic stay to proceed with our motion in the district court, or determines that it will decide the issue in the bankruptcy case.”

Murena declined to answer other questions about the case.

Linarducci is “throwing a roadblock at the receiver to buy more time, at a minimum,” said Indianapolis bankruptcy attorney Mark Zuckerberg, who is not involved in any of the Drive Planning legal cases.

Linarducci has filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection—a form of bankruptcy that, similar to a Chapter 11 filing for a business, allows the debtor to reorganize debts and come up with a plan to repay creditors over time.

Zuckerberg speculated that Linarducci chose Chapter 13 because the alternative, Chapter 7, only allows the debtor to retain a modest amount of personal assets. Assets above that amount are liquidated, with proceeds going to repay creditors.

“In a Chapter 13, they don’t take things from you,” Zuckerberg said.

Legal wrangling

The bankruptcy filing comes two weeks after Murena turned to the court for help in securing Linarducci’s Geist home.

“The receiver has attempted in good faith to resolve this matter with Mr. Linarducci, including discussions with his attorney and demands for payment or turnover of the property, all of which have been unsuccessful,” Murena said in a June 12 legal filing that is part of the SEC lawsuit against Drive.

Murena is asking the court to establish a constructive trust over the Linarducci home, which would allow Murena to take possession of the property and offer it for sale.

The home rightly belongs to the receivership estate, Murena said, because Drive Planning provided $1.92 million of the $1.95 million price for the home, which was purchased in July 2023 in the name of Gerardo and Jennifer Linarducci. That Drive money, Murena alleges, came from investors who believed Drive would invest it on their behalf.

Murena also alleged in that filing that, in addition to the $1.92 million home payment, Linarducci had received $6.27 million in transfers from Drive from August 2022 to June 2024, “presumably as commissions for bringing in investors.”

In the June 12 filing, Murena urged the court to act quickly. Murena said he had received a secondhand report that Linarducci “does not intend to turn over the property voluntarily and would ‘trash the place’ to prevent others from benefiting from it.”

Murena has also been working to liquidate a second local property, this one in Fishers.

That property, 13562 E. 116th St., is zoned for commercial use and includes a 1,200-square-foot building on a 0.88-acre site. Drive, which had been operating from the Hub & Spoke building elsewhere in Fishers, acquired the 116th Street property in 2022 for $625,000 with the intent of building its office there.

Murena’s office has engaged Fishers-based Envoy Real Estate to market the site.

Envoy Managing Broker Fred Krawczyk said his firm found a liquor store operator who was interested in buying the property, but that deal fell through because Fishers officials did not approve a rezoning that would have allowed a liquor store to open there.

Krawczyk said his firm continues to work to find a buyer. All offers must receive court approval, Krawczyk said, and the receiver has set $750,000 as the minimum acceptable price for the property.

Linarducci’s version

Linarducci, who, according to recent LinkedIn posts, has launched a sales coaching firm called Eyecan Business Coaching, did not respond to voicemail and text messages sent to the number listed on Eyecan’s website. Nor did he respond to written queries sent to him via the “contact us” and chat portals on that site or to emails sent to several other addresses that IBJ believes are connected to him.

But Linarducci is active on social media, posting on LinkedIn nearly daily in recent weeks (IBJ sent him a message there July 10. As of July 21, he had not responded). Most of the posts are designed to promote his Eyecan coaching business.

And he has publicly alluded to his current situation, painting a far different picture than that presented by prosecutors.

On a March 20 episode of a podcast called “Behind the Filter,” Linarducci described himself as an unwitting part of the alleged Ponzi scheme.

Without naming Drive Planning and without providing other key details, Linarducci said he had worked in the insurance business for years when a longtime friend asked him to join his organization. Linarducci said he took his friend up on that offer.

Linarducci said it wasn’t until two years later that he learned his friend, whom he did not name, had been running a Ponzi scheme. Linarducci said he experienced a visceral sense of betrayal at this news, “because you could not believe that this individual would do such a thing.”•