Hildebrant near deal on what he owes city

FLORENCE - The city and Chuck Hildebrant are close to an agreement about how much Hildebrant and his wife, Connie, owe the city for violating the lease on the Florence Freedom baseball stadium.

Florence called a special meeting for tonight so that City Council could approve the agreement should Hildebrant sign it today. State law requires 24 hours' notice before a special meeting.

"We believe we have an agreement, but it's not signed yet," Florence Mayor Diane Whalen said late Wednesday. She would not disclose the terms.

"It's been literally 24 hours a day," Hildebrant said of the negotiations.

The city had planned to argue Friday in Boone County Circuit Court that the Hildebrants owed the city between $3 million and $5 million. That hearing was to be the culmination of a lawsuit Florence won in May, which claimed the Hildebrants violated the lease on the city-owned stadium in at least 18 ways.

The Hildebrants were liable for the lease because they signed a personal guarantee saying they had enough money to cover the cost of the stadium.

Chuck Hildebrant, 46, was part owner of the Florence Freedom until the team filed for bankruptcy last year after contactors building the stadium said they were never paid.

As the team's finances unraveled, federal authorities discovered Hildebrant had forged several documents for bank loans, including his baseball partners' signatures, in order to get a $3 million loan to build the stadium.

Hildebrant pleaded guilty to bank fraud, filing false income taxes and making illegal campaign contributions. He is scheduled to begin serving five years in prison in January.

His sentence also includes repaying more than $4 million to the banks, his family and Florence.

Two years ago, Hildebrant told Florence he had $37 million. Now, he and his wife have filed for bankruptcy. Their assets have been seized by a bank.

Hildebrant talks

When he gets out of prison, Hildebrant will begin paying $128,000 to his cousins; $2.9 million to National City Bank, formerly Provident Bank; $750,000 to Heritage Bank; and $176,000 to Fifth Third Bank.

"No matter what, the city is at least third in line to get any money at any point," Hildebrant said. "Why are they wasting taxpayers' money chasing someone who doesn't have anything?"

Since the Freedom scandal began in the summer of 2004, Hildebrant has declined all requests for interviews. He's talking now because Florence's lawyers have accused him of transferring money to his two sons, he said.

"There's nothing that has been transferred," he said. "The FBI and the IRS would have jumped all over that."

Hildebrant says the Florence Freedom debacle cost him everything - his cars, planes, house, possessions and, most important, his family.

"If you look at what I had two years ago, would I have risked everything for this?" he said. "No way."

Last year, Fifth Third sold the Hildebrants' possessions. He's spent $160,000 on legal bills, his $500,000 home has been foreclosed on, and his only income is $200 a month for working at his son Christopher's cellular-phone store in Morrow. .

He's estranged from his wife, Connie.

"She got thrown into this thing because I had so much money at risk," Hildebrant said. "It was just like the last straw, this is it. She took off to Florida and she's been back very few times since."

Stadium doomed from start

The stadium, at Interstate 71/75 and U.S. 42, was originally planned to cost $5 million, he said. It then rose to more than $6 million, and ended up at $7.5 million.

"I said at the time we can't afford that, we can only do 5 (million)," Hildebrant said. "They (his partners) never communicated that back to the architects."

Hildebrant said even though the stadium was over budget, his partners in Northern Kentucky Professional Baseball kept pushing him.

"They said, 'You're the one that's going to lose because you signed the lease,'" he said. "I'm like, 'Guys, where are we going to come up with the money?'"

Hildebrant said the ownership group told the city in January 2004 that the stadium was over budget.

"The city should have put a stop on this thing in January and said, 'You're not going forward without showing us more money, updated financials or a performance bond,'" Hildebrant said.

The partnership was also shocked to learn in March 2004 that it did not own the stadium. The stadium was being built by the team but would ultimately be owned by the city, according to the lease agreement. Florence bought the land to allow a stadium to be built there.

Hildebrant said the partners didn't know because of a miscommunication.

"Why would we put $7 million or $10 million into something that the city owned?" he said. "It doesn't make sense, and it still doesn't until this day."

Though the lease expressly states that the city owned the stadium, Whalen said in a letter to the Kentucky Small Business Development Corp. that the team's owners were building the stadium and would own it.

Forgery led to this point

Hildebrant became involved with the Freedom when his son Christopher, known as "Flip," played golf with then-manager Chris Sabo in 2002. Sabo wanted Flip, who had played baseball at Georgetown College, to be on the team.

Sabo later told Hildebrant he wanted him to meet the team's owners, who were looking for investors.

"I didn't have to do this for (Flip)," Hildebrant said. "He was on the team before I even got involved."

Then he went from an investor to the managing member of Northern Kentucky Professional Baseball. Because he was signing the lease, the city wanted financial statements to back up his personal guarantee.

The statements show Hildebrant had $1.2 million in cash, $2 million in a children's trust fund, $2.3 million in real estate and $17 million in farmland. The statement also listed a jet, helicopter and an airplane.

The statement was also accompanied by two letters from certified public accountants. Those accountants say in affidavits that they never wrote the letters.

Hildebrant would not say why he gave Florence the forged documents.

"I'm not going to go into that," he said. "They verified it more than one way."

But Whalen said the city never checked the statements because he was brought in by the team's ownership group.

"We are here because of what he did," Whalen said. "If he hadn't presented us false financial documents from the get-go, we wouldn't have bought the land."

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