Bill’s Biography

America loves a “rags to riches” - an “underdog” – an “against all odds come-back”, a “survivor”! Bill has been a millionaire three times, bankrupt twice and a billionaire once.

Bill is the ultimate underdog/survivor/achiever overcoming personal circumstances and tragedy to rise to the top of corporate America. Homeless at age 14, a member of a street gang and a high-school drop-out – he took control of his life by taking the GED exam and putting himself through college and law school.

At the request of a bank, he took over a foreclosed oil-field pipe manufacturing plant and turned it into a million dollar a month business, until OPEC slashed the price of oil – leaving Bill out of business and a million dollars in debt.

Refusing to give up, Bill and his wife & business partner, Kathy, borrowed $13,000 and created a new industry – Debt Resolution. Three years later, they had repaid the entire million dollar debt. Over the next 13 years they grew the company to 3,900 employees with revenues in excess of $1 billion and earnings in excess of $182 million.

There they pioneered novel financial instruments still utilized today on Wall Street. They also implemented unheard of perks and benefits for their employees, such as salaries at 2 times the industry standard, free health care, free on-site day-care, 250% 401K match program and legendary company trips where they took ALL of the employees and their spouses on annual trips to the Bahamas, Las Vegas and Ocean Cruises. One year they leased 27 – 747’s so they could fly 6,000 employees and spouses to Disney World.

Bill and Kathy have individually graced the covers of national business magazines, Kathy on the cover of Forbes, and Bill on the cover of Inc. They were listed individually in the Forbes 400 wealthiest people in America. One national magazine ranked them number 25.

In 1998, tragedy struck when Bill’s former business partner committed fraud and sent the company into bankruptcy. Although Bill’s former business partner told the prosecutors that he had acted without Bill’s knowledge, admitted his guilt and was sent to prison – in the post Enron environment, U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, indicted Bill on 57 felony counts relating to Bill’s partners activities. Five years later, after a 2 ½ month long trial where the Government called 53 witnesses and produced over 1,000 exhibits, Bill rested his case without calling a single witness or producing a single exhibit. The jury unanimously acquitted Bill on all counts.

Ironically, 17 months after his acquittal and six and a half years after his company was liquidated, the Federal Bankruptcy Trustee issued his report which publicly acknowledged for the first time, “CFS was not a fraud”.

This experience would have embittered most people, but not them. Bill and Kathy now travel the country, sharing their stories of how they created their successes and how they dealt with their challenges. It is their life’s goal to do for “failure” what Betty Ford did for alcoholism and Susan Komen did for breast cancer.