A nine-year fight to recover a judgment that now exceeds $40 million from a Dallas private equity firm entered a new chapter Friday, when SunTx Capital Management was named in a lawsuit and accused of violating the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act.
The chain of events that led to Friday’s lawsuit can be traced back to 2015, when the original plaintiffs, West African Ventures and Sea Trucks Group FZE, began providing resources to subsidiaries of Ranger Offshore for the construction of two oil and gas projects off the coast of Nigeria — one for Shell and one for Conoil.
When Ranger failed to pay roughly $36 million for their services, the plaintiffs filed suit in 2017. A district court entered final judgment in March 2020, awarding the plaintiffs $36 million plus interest and attorney fees against Ranger and SunTx II GP, jointly and severally. SunTx appealed to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the judgment.
The plaintiffs, which also assigned and sold their judgment to Baer Creek Funding LLC, filed a second lawsuit in December 2021 against SunTx II GP and its executives Ned Fleming III and Craig Jennings, seeking to collect the final judgment from the first lawsuit, according to court documents.
In March 2023, Senior U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal entered final judgment, finding SunTx II was the general partner of SunTx Capital Partners II GP LP, and was jointly and severally liable for the March 2020 final judgment. By that point, the final judgment exceeded $40 million, and it continues to grow by about $1,500 each day, according to court records.
“Rather than satisfy the final judgment, SunTx II systematically dissipated its assets. After the Court entered its final judgment, SunTx II distributed approximately $1.6 million in additional funds through January 2024, including a single $1 million transfer,” Baer Creek told the court in the lawsuit filed Friday.
The lawsuit names SunTx Capital II Management Corp. and SunTx Capital Management Corp. as defendants.
“This is a case about a near $40 million judgment, against judgment debtors who are part of a network of private equity companies controlling two publicly traded companies worth nearly $9 billion in market capitalization, all managed by the same executives, and its multi-year campaign to avoid paying what is owed,” the 14-page lawsuit alleges.
Baer Creek alleges the SunTx entities have “repeatedly claimed to be insolvent,” but “at the same time, SunTx II funded the lifestyles of the SunTx executives and squirreled away large sums to SunTx I.” After the March 2023 final judgment, the lawsuit alleges, SunTx “swept” SunTx II’s accounts and wired $1 million from SunTx II to SunTx I.
“In May 2026, SunTx’s CPA produced documents in response to a subpoena and after the Court entered a discovery order to address noncompliance,” Baer Creek told the court. “This production revealed that SunTx II transferred $1 million to a SunTx I bank account in January 2024 for an alleged ‘overhead reimbursement.’ Despite answering interrogatories and producing documents in response to both requests for production and subpoenas served on the SunTx Affiliates seeking precisely this information, this transfer, its recipient, its alleged purpose, and true nature remained undisclosed for years. Plaintiff now seeks recovery of at least the $1 million fraudulently transferred as part of SunTx II’s effort to evade the final judgment.”
Baer Creek is represented by Brad Thompson, James Earl, Nicolette Zulli and Brandon Carmack of Duane Morris.
Counsel for SunTx Capital had not filed an appearance as of Monday.
The case number is 4:26-cv-07254. The case number for the related lawsuit is 4:21-cv-04124.