Businessman Timothy Jones alleges in a lawsuit against the Territorial Bank of American Samoa (TBAS) and its CEO and President David Buehler, that the bank president and the bank’s attorney masterminded a legal scheme to hire all private attorneys in American Samoa to force someone suing the bans to represent themselves.
Jones claims he sought out every lawyer he could find in American Samoa and placed two ads in the Samoa News in a final attempt to locate legal representation without TBAS conflict, before filing pro se, that is his own lawyer.
He submits a signed affidavit by Milo Amundsen who alleged that when he was in a private meeting with Buehler, he declared that TBAS lawyer Bucky Jones has masterminded the scheme.
To further support his claim, Jones said that when he attempted to file pro se on behalf of his son in their suit against TBAS in 2021, Buehler reportedly ordered the bank lawyer Bucky Jones to file a criminal complaint against Jones for illegally representing his son.
The attorney filed a criminal complaint with police and, according to Jones, the attorney threatened that if he did not withdraw their suit, TBAS would pursue criminal action against him and hold him to account for lawyer fees.
The lawsuit filed by Jones this week relates to a business deal gone bad. The deal is between two companies, Rising Nine, owned by Jones’ son, and Endless Power, which the plaintiff owns, and TBAS.
Jones lays out in his suit that under a previous CEO and President of TBAS, Drew Roberts, he was approached to offer assistance to connect TBAS’ ATM network to the mainland using his son’s company Rising Nine certificates and Endless Power to service the ATMs. TBAS at the time was having difficulty with its own ATMs.
According to Jones, an agreement was made between Rising Nine, Endless Power and TBAS, whereby TBAS would provide a permanent ATM settling account for the two companies, “with as much cash as Rising Nine needed for its ATMS without cash fees.” In addition, TBAS would provide a $50,000 revolving loan account for Rising Nine and Endless Power. TBAS would deploy 9 ATMS so as not to overly intrude and unfairly compete with Rising Nine’s ATMs, and Endless Power would service the TBAS ATMs.
Jones claims that he convinced his son to allow TBAS to use Rising Nine’s intellectual property and business connections to facilitate the necessary and complicated connections to the VISA and Master Card network, to start up TBAS ATMs.
He said, TBAS met the terms of their agreement opening an ATM settling account for Rising Nine, established a $50k revolving credit line and began providing no fee cash for Rising Nine ATMs.
TBAS also signed an ATM service agreement that compensated Endless Power lucratively for the service of TBAS ATMs.
The service agreement gave TBAS authority to run a maximum of 9 ATMS on Rising Nine ISO, provided that a 3-year service contract was given to Endless Power to service all TBAS ATMs with ISO companies and oversight power.
Jones’ lawsuit states that their agreement was formalized in a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA).
He points out in his suit that at the time of the signing on March 29, 2018, they didn’t notice an error in the documents where the name of Rising Nine became Rising Power.
Fast forward to December 2019, Roberts left his position as TBAS CEO.
According to Jones, in May 2021, Roberts’ replacement, Buehler, abruptly canceled their partners agreement.
Jones states that Buehler declared in an email that the Strategic Partnership Agreement was null and void, that Rising Nine was not authorized to execute the SPA as the business listed on the agreement was rising Power LLC.
The plaintiff points out that former TBAS CEO Roberts provides an affidavit stating that the error in the name was a “mutual harmless error.”
Later in April, 2021, Jones said that he received another email from Buehler stating that their business accounts at TBAS were going to be closed due to anti-money laundering regulations.
The plaintiff states that—to date—TBAS continues to operate and maintain 5 ATMS that were previously owned by Rising Nine but “with no SPA, [they] does not own and is operating for profit without compensation to Rising Nine since CEO Buehler” canceled their agreement.
The suit alleges breach of contract, unjust enrichment and tortuous interference with prospective economic advantage.
As relief, Jones is asking that TBAS pay him the value of money he’s lost from use of the Rising Nine ATMs of $763,200, for damages of $1.5 million plus exemplary damages of $1 million.
