Mark Erney, who was charged last year with defrauding the owners of St. Louis-based Sam’s Steakhouse out of more than $1.4 million, has been allowed to enter a diversion program that will again allow him to avoid jail time—12 years after he pleaded guilty to defrauding partners in a different local restaurant.
Patrick Long, the owner of Sam’s Steakhouse, says he was not consulted on the diversion agreement and is livid that his restaurant’s former general manager got such a generous deal. He blames Erney for hastening the demise of his late father, Dennis Long, who had been a respected president of Anheuser-Busch before he got into the restaurant business. “It’s not right,” he says of the deal offered to Erney. “It’s going to be swept under the rug.”
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In 2014, Erney was given five years’ probation and ordered to repay $45,000 after stealing from the partners with whom he co-owned a Hamburger Mary’s franchise in Midtown. While he ultimately repaid that money, his former partners say he never paid up on the settlement he forged to settle the lawsuit they filed.
One of those partners, Ed Roullard, declined to say how much the settlement totaled, but notes that Erney was accused of stiffing him and another partner after they made loans totaling $55,000.
“He seems capable of wiggling out of anything,” Roullard says, adding, “I think one of his best skills is that he’s a charming guy. He got me, and I think it served him well, but boy, anybody else who wants to work with him better beware.”
Erney’s defense attorney, Marc Johnson, is managing partner of the prominent criminal defense firm Rosenblum Schwartz Fry & Johnson. He declined comment on the case. The assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, Derek Wiseman, did not respond to a request for comment.
Long notes that, because of how a diversion agreement is handled, he did not even get a chance to speak before the judge. As long as Erney satisfies the terms of the agreement—which are not part of the public record—he should emerge from the case without another criminal conviction.
That’s even though the man Erney hired as the restaurant’s bookkeeper, Matthew Braasch, has entered a guilty plea in the case. Braasch’s plea admits that he and Erney defrauded the restaurant of “more than $550,000” and worked together in a scheme to use company credit cards to “purchase themselves furniture, vacations, and clothing, among other personal expenses, none of which was authorized by their victim employer.” Braasch allegedly paid for a Disney World vacation ($2,681) and Cardinals tickets ($5,425), among other items. The plea agreement also says that Erney bought himself a couch on Amazon ($2,045), a second couch from Hydeline Furniture ($3,599), and more than $880 in expenses on Sasha’s on DeMun, among other expenses.
Braasch is set to be sentenced later this month. Long says this time, he will get a chance to be in court—and he intends to take it.
But he believes it will be cold comfort knowing Erney likely got off much more easily. Says Long, “He was the mastermind of the whole thing.”
