Believe it or not, this bankruptcy case was just recently concluded. Yes, it's taken almost 3 YEARS for this mess to end! In a nutshell, here's what happened...

Pearson's bankruptcy was granted. The bankruptcy court sold everything in his shop, and the proceeds were distributed to his creditors (including customers he ripped off). He was never charged with any crimes. If he hid any money (which I'm absolutely convinced he did), he got away with it. No "secret" bank accounts or anything were ever discovered. Law enforcement knew of this whole mess, but for whatever reason they chose not to charge him with anything.

In the end, the average customer who paid him a $25,000 deposit ended up with a check for something like $900.

Essentially nothing happened to the guy. Last I heard, he was still working for the railroad in North Platte.

 

That's what I thought after visinting his shop. The cars I inspected there were extremely rough. Every car needed quarters, floors, trunk pans, doors, etc... I wasn't expecting him to start with perfect cars, but in this case every donor car was a basket case. And the bodywork that had been done was low quality. I talked to a shop that bought one of his half-finished shells, and the "craftsmanship" was so bad, they had to un-do anything that Pearson's shop had done. Their welding was pretty horrific, too.

Pearson was never able to answer this question...but I am still curious to know exactly HOW MANY cars he actually completed and shipped. I visited his shop a couple of times, and only saw one car anywhere near completion. I wonder if that's the only one he ever finished?