Biggest Scoops (40 Years of Arkansas Business)

Editor’s note: This article is part of a special magazine celebrating 40 years of Arkansas Business. The full magazine is available here.

A scoop is not just an original story — Arkansas Business is full of those every week. A scoop is a story so important that other news organizations are forced to follow. Here are some of our biggest.

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Oct. 1, 1984

Fledgling Arkansas Business’ reputation and future viability were on the line when founding Editor Ted Wagnon published a story questioning the credentials of a Florida businessman, Paul Simmons, who had excited local business boosters by promising to build Arkansas’ first biotech industrial park, BioPlex International. The story, which revealed that Simmons’ resume was well padded, drew a firestorm of criticism — which subsided when others confirmed that Simmons was not who he claimed to be.

June 20, 1988

Readers learned how First Federal of Arkansas in Little Rock hid its loan problems until it could issue $34 million in stock. In documents obtained by Arkansas Business, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board found more than $200 million in substandard assets in the S&L’s commercial loan portfolio. Arkansas Business also reported discrepancies with First Federal’s earnings statements in 1986.

Jan. 23, 1995

On the surface, everything was hunky dory at the new Bud Walton Arena on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. The Razorbacks basketball team had won the 1994 National Championship, and the $30 million showplace was the talk of its collegiate peers. Behind the scenes, however, a line of angry subcontractors who had worked overtime to complete the project on schedule — saving Hubert Hunt & Nichols Inc. of Indianapolis big-money penalties — were making claims for unpaid services. The story was recognized nationally by the Association of Area Business Publications as one of the year’s biggest scoops.

May 19, 1997

Arkansas Business and its new sister publication, Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, were the first to report that Springdale philanthropist Bernice Jones had fired her longtime friend and trusted accountant, H.G. “Jack” Frost Jr., over suspicions of embezzling from the Harvey & Bernice Jones Charitable Trust, of which he was a co-trustee. Eventually, it would be determined that Frost had stolen $1.8 million from the trust. He was found guilty and sentenced to 70 months in federal prison.

Aug. 3, 1998

When the planned opening of Alltel Arena in October 1999 was canceled just hours before the inaugural NBA exhibition game because of problems in the concrete risers, readers of Arkansas Business had a sense of deja vu. The previous year, in an award-winning story, we broke the news that the construction was more than a month behind schedule because of a geometric error in pouring a row of pillars and connecting beams.

Oct. 28, 2002

A 2002 Arkansas Business report was the first to reveal the magnitude of the investment scheme run by M. David Howell Jr. of Little Rock, who had been found dead a few days earlier in a Beverly Hills hotel room. Even the story’s headline, “Howell’s Debts May Total $60M,” proved an understatement; actual claims against Howell’s estate eventually topped $80 million. The next month, Arkansas Business would be the first to report that Hot Springs banker Richard T. Smith had co-signed millions of dollars worth of Howell’s promissory notes.

Dec. 2, 2002

Arkansas Business reported that Little Rock tax lawyer Keith Moser and his client, Dan F. Whitt of Maumelle, were targets of a federal grand jury investigation in Detroit over an alleged kickback scheme. Whitt and his son, David Whitt of Little Rock, would plead guilty in 2003; Moser was also scheduled to plead guilty that year but went missing instead. In February 2004, Arkansas Business would be the first to reveal that an Arkansas tax fraud charge against Moser was related to the 1996 sale of Cellular One by Little Rock attorney Ted Skokos, who was not charged.

Feb. 28, 2008

The Jan. 28, 2008, disappearance of John Glasgow, chief financial officer of CDI Contractors of Little Rock, was an ongoing mystery when Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz shed light on the circumstances surrounding his vanishing. Moritz’s article focused on the contents of a letter Glasgow drafted to the CEO of CDI’s half-owner, Dillard’s Inc., which revealed strain in the relationship between the two companies. Glasgow’s remains were eventually found on Petit Jean Mountain in March 2015; his manner of death was listed as “undetermined” in a medical examiner’s report.

June 16, 2008

State and local economic developers were plenty peeved when, days before their planned announcement, Arkansas Business reported that Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, California, was planning to locate a 1,200-employee “techs and geeks” operation in Conway. And HP did arrive the following year, but the Silicon Valley tech giant just isn’t what it used to be. By 2013, the state was clawing back incentives used to reel in HP.

May 11, 2009

When IberiaBank announced it had written off $3.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2008 due to credit fraud by an Arkansas client, Arkansas Business went on the hunt for the unnamed perpetrator. After sifting through court documents, Editor Gwen Moritz found that it was Dana Washburn of Rogers, wife of former Walmart executive Colon Washburn, who was accused of defrauding IberiaBank’s Arkansas charter, Pulaski Bank & Trust of Little Rock, by using a fake brokerage account as collateral. Washburn ended up pleading guilty to bank fraud and was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $3.58 million in restitution.

Oct. 9, 2009

Arkansas Business was the first to report that Lewis May, president of Little Rock’s May Construction, was arrested by Little Rock police on a warrant issued in Virginia over a dispute with subcontractors on construction of a Lowe’s store. The charges were ultimately dropped when  May paid the contractors, but May’s business never recovered.

Dec. 6, 2010

It started as a Whisper about First Southern Bank of Batesville buying $22 million worth of fraudulent rural improvement district bonds and problems locating Kevin Lewis, the Little Rock attorney who had sold the bonds to the bank. It bloomed into the largest fraud ever prosecuted in Arkansas. Lewis didn’t just sell phony bonds to First Southern, where his family trust was the majority shareholder. At least a dozen banks lost a combined $50 million in the scheme that boiled down to a classic Ponzi. Lewis pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

Dec. 3, 2012

University of Arkansas officials confirmed to Arkansas Business in late 2012 that they were working to correct a multimillion-dollar deficit in the school’s Division of University Advancement for the second consecutive fiscal year. Chris Bahn — who had been Arkansas Business’ northwest Arkansas editor for less than a month — also told readers that Vice Chancellor Brad Choate had been stripped of day-to-day management responsibilities and would lose his job at the end of the fiscal year over the budget shortfall, which was projected to hit $4.37 million.

Oct. 14, 2013

Arkansas Business Senior Editor Mark Friedman’s attention to detail while combing through federal filings revealed the case of a Mountain Home doctor who was accused of racking up millions in fraudulent Medicare billings before he died. According to a criminal investigator’s affidavit Friedman uncovered, Dr. Stacey M. Johnson likely would have been charged with overbilling Medicare by $14.7 million if he hadn’t died at age 63. (It was believed to be the largest Medicare fraud in the state’s history, but he looked like an amateur when lab owner Billy Joe Taylor of Lavaca pleaded guilty to a $134 million Medicare fraud in 2022.)

Feb. 9, 2015

A long-running dispute between siblings would result in a massive land sale in Arkansas and Jefferson counties, Senior Editor George Waldon told Arkansas Business readers in early 2015. Deborah Tipton of Memphis and her younger brother George Dunklin Jr., then the national president of Ducks Unlimited, had long fought over nearly 16,000 acres they had inherited from their parents, which included farmland, timberland and a prime duck-hunting area and lodge. In a follow-up, Waldon revealed that Dunklin himself was the high bidder for the land and the Five Oaks Duck Lodge.

Jan. 6, 2017

In January 2017, state Rep. Micah Neal, R-Springdale, pleaded guilty to federal charges and admitted he and an unnamed state senator directed money from the General Improvement Fund to two nonprofits in exchange for bribes. As everyone rushed to decode the alphabet soup of unindicted people described in his plea agreement, Arkansas Business was the first to confirm that the unnamed “Person A” mentioned in the deal was Rusty Cranford, executive vice president of Preferred Family Healthcare Inc. of Kirksville, Missouri. Cranford was eventually convicted in the bribery scandal, along with five Arkansas lawmakers and multiple other people.

Aug. 14, 2017

Senior Editor Mark Friedman was the first to report on the paper trail federal prosecutors followed to uncover an illegal sports bookmaking operation in northwest Arkansas. Financial adviser Robert E. Rogers of Rogers was indicted in July 2017 on charges of operating a gambling business and money laundering after an investigation into suspicious cash withdrawals from his personal bank accounts led agents to uncover the large-scale gambling operation in Benton County. The next year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal prohibition on sports betting, paving the way for bookmaking operations to eventually come to Arkansas legally.

Jan. 29, 2018

The Plains & Eastern Clean Line, meant to carry 4,000 megawatts of wind energy from the Oklahoma Panhandle to just north of Memphis, was expected to make a $660 million economic impact on Arkansas and generate hundreds of jobs. But in early 2018 Assistant Editor Kyle Massey revealed the line would not cross Arkansas after all, having been partially sold and abandoned by potential customers. Arkansas Business beat competitors to the story by more than a month, and the scoop won a national award for the publication.

Oct. 31, 2022

Arkansas Business’ Gwen Moritz received national recognition once again when she revealed a previously unknown attempt by Auburn University to poach University of Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek. After learning Auburn had offered Yurachek $2 million to jump ship and fill its own vacant athletic director position, Moritz confirmed the UA had kept Yurachek by offering him a new five-year contract in which his annual salary would be raised from $1.25 million to $1.5 million with deferred compensation of $250,000 from private funds. Other news and sports outlets across the SEC quickly followed up on the scoop.