A bankruptcy trustee is suing the wife of a former Rockland County businessman for allegedly participating in an illegal transfer of assets.
Howard P. Magaliff is asking U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains to revoke transfers of assets from Mark Acker to Rochelle Acker.
“There is a permissible inference,” Magaliff states in the Sept. 26 complaint, that Mark Acker transferred assets to his wife “with the intent to hinder, delay or defraud creditors.”
The Ackers, formerly of Haverstraw, live in Boyton Beach, Florida. Mark Acker owned IMA Construction Corp. and MSA Consulting Corp., of Haverstraw, and Galaxy Fine Arts Inc., Suffern. He also worked as a part-time police officer in South Nyack until he was disabled in a motorcycle accident in 2019.
Mark Acker petitioned for bankruptcy protection in 2022, declaring $757,464 in assets and nearly $1.8 million in liabilities. Eventually, 21 creditors filed claims totaling nearly $4.2 million.
He stated in a bankruptcy record that he was unemployed and receiving $30,444 a year in Social Security Disability benefits. Rochelle Acker was working as a teacher’s aide.
He attributed his financial problems to litigation that his brother and sister brought against him in Florida, where a court ordered him to pay $960,000 to their father’s estate.
The gist of the trustee’s lawsuit is that Rochelle Acker helped Mark Acker conceal assets to avoid paying debts.
For instance, Mark Acker failed to provide access to a storage unit that contained Star Trek memorabilia worth at least $464,426 and owned by Galaxy Fine Arts, according to Magaliff.
When Magaliff asked for documents about the transfer of the businesses to Rochelle Acker, he was given minutes of annual meetings purportedly held in 2003 and 2004. But the metadata indicate that Rochelle Acker created the documents in September 2022, after he filed for bankruptcy protection.
This past July, Magaliff says, the Ackers testified that Mark’s interest in the three businesses were transferred to Rochelle in 2003. But Mark Acker did not explain why there are no documents about the transfers other than the purported minutes of annual meetings. His testimony also allegedly contradicted testimony in a recent trial in which he stated that he was the sole shareholder of each company. And tax returns filed from 2003 to 2017 show him as sole shareholder of the companies.
Magaliff concluded that the business assets were not transferred in 2003, but instead  in 2017, around the time he incurred a substantial debt. He is asking the court to revoke the transfers and order Rochelle Acker to pay over the value of the assets.
