Ronald Devine, the former NASCAR team owner who once fielded cars under the BK Racing banner, has found himself on the receiving end of a legal slap so fierce it might as well have come with a checkered flag waving “game over.” A federal appeals court has upheld a jaw-dropping $31 million judgment against Devine and his associates, citing what judges described as a “pattern of bad faith” during the bankruptcy saga of his former race team.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling on Friday, adding another layer of trouble for Devine, who’s also facing federal criminal charges for allegedly failing to pay employee payroll taxes. Because, apparently, one scandal at a time just isn’t his style.
This all stems from the messy 2018 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of BK Racing, a team that, much like its owner’s legal woes, was never exactly a front-runner. The court didn’t mince words, calling out Devine and his co-defendants for blatantly ignoring court orders and discovery requests. Their antics included threatening to “let the lawyers fight forever” and refusing to hand over financial records, which, it turns out, would’ve revealed a suspicious $6.4 million siphoned out of BK Racing through a web of corporations and family trusts.
Devine’s playbook? Obfuscation, delay, and what could generously be called creative accounting. The court noted that his empire of shell corporations and trusts was used as an “alter ego” to shuffle money around in a way that would make even the boldest Monopoly player blush.
For NASCAR fans, this is less of a cautionary tale and more of a confirmation that sometimes the biggest wrecks don’t happen on the track. As for Devine, he may have avoided the walls at Daytona, but in the courtroom, there’s no escaping the checkered past catching up with him.
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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