In late 2002, Stan Anderson treated his new employees to dinner at The Broker, a high-end restaurant in a former bank vault in downtown Denver.
The choice was sentimental. Anderson’s first job was microfilming checks on the graveyard shift in that very building, the old Denver National Bank.
He met his future wife there. His mentor, a fellow member of historic Central Presbyterian Church just down the street, had worked at the bank too.
Over steamed gulf shrimp and bottles of wine, the true believers in E-Smart Services Inc. excitedly listened to Anderson and his partners talk about going public and being sold to a big bank or high-tech firm.
Only a few weeks later, Anderson told employees of the commercial credit card startup that he had no money to pay them, beginning the end of another sad business chapter for an entrepreneur whose big dreams often fail to come true, former employees and associates say.
Whether the subject is the renovation of the historic church building so dear to his heart, dazzling new technology that will set his company apart, or the jaw-dropping $150 million donation he promised on June 15 to the Presbyterian Church (USA), the 62-year-old Denver businessman is a visionary.
But Anderson’s business record and interviews with former associates paint a portrait of a man whose ideas hold great promise but whose business acumen regularly fails him, a man skilled at forging relationships with everyone from the mayor’s brother to a former Denver Bronco, yet unable to pay his bills.
“I don’t think it is out of ill will, but a personality flaw of not wanting to face problems, of constantly looking to the positive,” said John Boice, who relocated his family to Denver to work for E-Smart. “Stan ends up isolating and alienating a lot of folks.”
With questions mounting about whether Anderson can fulfill the record pledge to his 2.3-million-member denomination, the Arvada man finds himself in a much brighter spotlight than the banking trade journals in which he was often quoted.
Public records show Anderson has faced liens for failing to pay bills and owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to creditors. His house is in foreclosure and his assets are frozen because of an unsettled judgment.
Anderson said he is paying off remaining debts and will deliver by November with the $150 million, which he said will come mostly from “offshore investments” he would not describe.
Anderson grew up in east Denver, the youngest of six children. His father spent five years in a hospital charity ward recovering from heart attacks and strokes before dying when Anderson was 14, he recalled.
The family went on welfare. Anderson’s mother took a job as a clerk in the old Denver Dry Goods building. Anderson said he mowed lawns, shoveled driveways and sold Christmas cards and doughnuts door-to-door.
Through it all, the Andersons faithfully attended Central Presbyterian Church, the oldest Presbyterian church in Colorado and a charitable bedrock.
Anderson earned a degree from the University of Colorado School of Banking and climbed up the Denver banking ladder.
“I always felt a sense of security with banking,” Anderson said. “In those days, you thought, ‘Forty years and a gold watch.”‘
Even Anderson’s doubters credit him as a pioneer of the procurement card, a sort of debit card that businesses use to buy goods and governments use so program recipients get benefits.
In the mid-1980s, when a Colorado National Bank subsidiary won a federal contract to develop a procurement-card system, Anderson headed the project.
Sensing an untapped market, Anderson in 1988 launched a consulting company and a year later founded ProCard Inc.
Based in Golden, ProCard specialized in a skill that the big credit-card companies lacked at the time: strong reporting on the back end of transactions. Coors Brewing, Shell and Chevron were clients of banks that signed on with ProCard.
Under Anderson’s leadership, however, ProCard lost money and its board in 1995 forced him out, said Arthur Horecki, a former ProCard vice president.
Anderson remembers it differently, saying he left after the board became worried that a major investor he was courting had takeover notions.
In 2000, with Anderson long gone, investors’ patience was rewarded when ProCard was sold for $20 million in stock to a subsidiary of credit-card processing giant Total Systems Inc., according to Mergerstat, which tracks mergers and acquisitions.
One of ProCard’s promoters was Laurance Hoagland Jr., who, like Anderson, served on the Presbyterian Church (USA) board of pensions. Based on Hoag land’s recommendation, three investors from Columbus, Ind., bought into the ProCard vision, including Terry Marbach, who invested nearly $100,000.
“I don’t think (Anderson) is dishonest,” Marbach said. “He gets involved with things he has passion for and thinks will work. I don’t think anyone viewed him as insincere, just incapable.”
Anderson’s next big idea was E-Smart Services. E-Smart was to develop proprietary technology with more secure controls for online purchases at the individual cardholder level.
Rich Meliska bought the vision. Based in suburban Chicago, Meliska quit a banking job in 2002 to market E-Smart to banks and big corporations, joining six or eight other banking hotshots whom Anderson had wooed.
During a multi-day kickoff meeting that featured the dinner at The Broker, the new employees were introduced to members of the E-Smart executive team, including longtime Anderson associate Edwin A. Smith. Smith is a Bermuda native and Colorado College grad who played defensive end for the Broncos in the mid-1970s.
“I found Stan to be a very honorable person, a very God-fearing man,” Smith said Friday before cutting the interview short, saying his schedule was full.
Joe Webb, brother of former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, is E-Smart’s legal counsel. He declined to comment Friday.
Three weeks into the job, Meliska, who was telecommuting, got word that Anderson couldn’t meet payroll. Most employees bailed, Meliska said.
“Stan Anderson has big ideas and no execution,” said Meliska, 53. “He didn’t start out E-Smart in a small way. We assumed if we went to work for a company it was financially sound. But it was all smoke and glass.”
Meliska took his beef to the Illinois Department of Labor, which filed suit against E-Smart and won a $36,718.86 default judgment, records show. Anderson said he has paid the debt to the state, which Meliska confirmed but said he had yet to be paid.
Boice, who quit a plum job at Caterpillar Financial Services and moved his family from Nashville, Tenn., said he was stiffed on six months’ salary and a $25,000 loan.
“Stan doesn’t want to deliver a negative message, and it keeps him from telling people the truth,” said Boice, 45, who stayed in Denver and works in the nonprofit sector.
E-Smart office products entrepreneur Derek Faison won a default judgment of more than $850,000 against the company.
Faison’s lawsuit alleged that Anderson’s son Brian was supposed to demonstrate the new technology but delivered a glorified PowerPoint presentation.
Brian Anderson, who works as special assistant to Colorado state Treasurer Mike Coffman, referred questions about E-Smart to his father.
He said of his father’s donation to the church: “I have absolutely no reason to doubt that my father will make good on his promise and his commitment. That’s the kind of man that he is.”
Stan Anderson blamed the failure of E-Smart in part on the post-Sept. 11, 2001, economy that dried up investment capital.
“Any time you cannot meet your credit obligations, you regret it,” Anderson said. “I look forward to the time when all of our debts and responsibilities are paid – and to the fulfillment of the pledge to the Presbyterian Church.”
The Rev. Martin Jacobsen, of Central Presbyterian, says they’re standing by Anderson.”Our first default position is, we stand with people in good times and bad times,” Jacobsen said. “We don’t throw anyone overboard or shoot the wounded.”
Anderson talks about religion when answering questions about his ability to deliver on a promise that would rocket him into the Bill Gates stratosphere of philanthropy.
“People of faith need to be strong, and that faith is tested from time to time,” Anderson said. “I’m simply an instrument. God gave me talents and he gave me gifts. He gives me grace, and that’s all I can ask.
“He didn’t say it was going to be easy, did he?”
Staff writer Eric Gorski can be reached at 303-820-1698 or egorski@denverpost.com
Anderson’s trail of unpaid bills
Stan Anderson promised $150 million to a new fund for church growth started by the Presbyterian Church (USA). But financial problems in Anderson’s business and personal life have called into question his ability to honor the pledge:
- Former Anderson employee Derek Faison filed suit in 2004 alleging Anderson and partner Edwin A. Smith didn’t pay his salary and never paid back a $100,000 loan or a $20,000 “crisis advance.” When Anderson and Smith failed to respond on time, a judge entered a $851,369 default judgment against them and froze their assets.
- A Cherry Hills Village couple sued in 2004 after Anderson and Smith failed to pay back a $100,000 loan. A settlement was reached but hasn’t been fully paid.
- Anderson’s Arvada home, which has an assessed value of $282,090, is in foreclosure. Anderson said he is negotiating to keep the property.
- A federal tax lien was filed against Anderson and his wife in 1996 for taxes totaling $52,069 from 1993 and 1994. The debt was satisfied in 1998.
- Three times since 2003, the Meadowglen Homeowners Association has filed liens against Anderson for late monthly assessments of $60 to $70.
- Anderson’s company was nearly evicted for failing to pay three months’ rent, and he has faced actions for failing to pay credit-card and dental bills.
Denver Post research of public records
