Vaquero Club is missing more than $5 million and the CFO was fired. What happened?
The former chief financial officer of the Vaquero Club in Westlake has been fired after a $5.4 million deficit was discovered.
As first reported by the real estate blog Candy’s Dirt, Brent Miller was fired by the Board after he told General Manager Todd Huizinga that he had been misleading Huizinga, previous general managers and current and former board members regarding the club’s finances, according to a five-page letter sent to club members on Feb. 27.
Miller provided the board with false financial statements, budget documents and fictitious cash balance documents, the letter states.
The board was led to believe that the club had no debt and a “healthy cash balance” that would have sustained it until member fees were due in June. Instead, the club is $2.5 million in debt and has no cash balance. It will take $2.9 million to fund the club until June.
It’s not clear what exactly happened with the money, and multiple agencies are investigating the loss to see if the issue is a criminal matter. Those investigations are still ongoing, spokesman Jim Wilkinson said.
“When the Board learned of this financial wrongdoing they immediately took action, and law enforcement is now involved,” Wilkinson said in an emailed statement. “Vaquero has a strong foundation and active membership. As you can imagine our members are angry and this is a very serious issue, but we will get past this as a Club and be just fine.”
Miller has not returned a request for comment. According to his LinkedIn page, he supervised a staff of two people at the club, managed the $5 million annual payroll, $11 million annual budget and maintained $3 million in cash.
The roughly 400 members have been asked to pay an assessment to get the club out of debt and operating until June, which totals $5.4 million.
Each golf member was given a 10-day notice to pay an assessment of $14,304.64, and social members are required to pay $7,152.32, along with taxes.
An equity membership is $195,000 plus about $17,000 in yearly dues.
Vaquero is a gated community and golf club in Westlake and has been called the most affluent neighborhood in America by Forbes.
The neighborhood has been home to a host of celebrities, including the Jonas Brothers, who lived in a $3.2 million home on Wisteria Way, according to Forbes. Sean Payton, the head coach of the New Orleans Saints, lived there once. Talk show host Glenn Beck listed his Vaquero Club home for $5.9 million in July.
In June, former secretary of state and ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson bought former baseball player Vernon Wells’ 16,238-square-foot mansion there.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 1:30 PM.
