Copar Quarries gets a half million dollar cash infusion

The big surprise is its source

By Will Collette

Here’s a mystery for you: why would the landlord of a troublesome tenant, a tenant that has drawn undesired public attention and scorn onto the landlord, co-sign a loan for that tenant and pledge the property being leased to that tenant as security for that loan?

Yes, you may have to read the question two or three times to get it straight. However, this is the scenario revealed in a recently unearthed record that was filed with the Charlestown Town Clerk’s Office.

The record is a Mortgage Deed filed by Westerly Granite, the company owned by the prominent and well-connected Comolli family of Westerly which is leasing land in Bradford being used by the notorious Connecticut-based Copar Quarries for the granite quarry. 

Click here to read the mortgage deed yourself. It is signed by Westerly Granite President Richard Comolli.

Westerly Granite is pledging 109 acres of land that span the Westerly-Charlestown town line as collateral to guarantee a loan of $500,000 to “Copar Industries LLC, a Rhode Island limited company” from the Performance Asset Group LLC of Middletown, CT.

Wouldn’t it be nice if every landlord was so kind to every tenant? But, why is Westerly Granite doing this?

The mystery deepens when you look into the lender, the Performance Asset Group. Avid Progressive Charlestown readers may recall that Middletown, CT is the home base of Connecticut trash titan and major Copar player Phil Armetta. But that’s not the only connection.

Screen shot from the Connecticut Secretary of State's corporate database

As this screen shot from the Connecticut Secretary of State’s corporate database shows, Performance Asset Group’s principal is lawyer Mark A. Balaban.

Mark A. Balaban also happens to be the attorney for Phil Armetta’s real estate business.

Balaban also represents Armetta’s Crescent Star LLC and, before Armetta transferred title to his children, Balaban represented the flagship of Armetta’s trash empire, Regional Transfer Systems, Inc.

Phil Armetta (photo courtesy of Stephen
Devoto, Middletown Eye)

Phil Armetta is one of the main players in the Copar Quarry drama, but one rarely seen in Rhode Island. Armetta is heralded as one of Connecticut’s top players in the trash industry.

In 2006, Armetta was indicted as a tangential player in the federal racketeering case against the Galante Family. Armetta was originally charged with extortion, but ended up pleading down to a lesser charge that landed him in federal penitentiary for three months, followed by three months of house arrest.

I profiled Armetta in “Meet the New Neighbors, Part One.”

Armetta has a long history of taking old quarry sites and turning them into waste disposal sites as he did in Middletown with the Kleen Energy “recycling” facility in Middletown, CT which blew up in 2010 killing six workers.

Armetta is also staking Copar to build another “recycling” facility in a quarry in Lisbon, CT. The project manager for the Lisbon dump “recycling” facility is Elizabeth Burdick, Westerly’s former Zoning Officer who was forced out of office after it was revealed that she had been offered this job by Copar – while she was apparently still responsible for enforcing Westerly zoning law on the company!

Site of Armetta's Kleen Energy "recycling" site in
Middletown CT after it blew up. It was also built in a quarry

Currently Copar has two facilities in our community – the granite quarry in Bradford that has been much in the news, and the former Morrone sand and gravel pit on the banks of the Pawcatuck in Charlestown. Rumors have it they have their eyes on an old South County Sand & Gravel site on Klondike Road in Charlestown.

This new half-million dollar cash infusion into Copar’s already heavily leveraged operations (click here for details on how heavily in debt Copar is) has many odd aspects to it. 

As my “Meet the New Neighbors” series showed, Copar’s CEO Sam Cocopard has had an array of failed businesses plus a long string of arrests and convictions for an array of financial crimes. His last conviction was just last January for stealing $20,000 from Rhode Island’s Titan of Trash Joe Vinagro.

Site of Copar's Lisbon CT quarry/trash site

Cocopard has gone bankrupt several times, has had multiple tax liens placed against his home and businesses, and owes restitution to victims of his crimes and civil judgments to his creditors.

Yet, Phil Armetta and a number of other lenders staked him with the cash for his very interesting business model. 

Cocopard leased a fleet of shiny new purple trucks and opened several facilities in Rhode Island and Connecticut. As his top lieutenants, he hired two guys with records of failure and heavy-duty legal problems – Randy Roberge and Daniel Thibodeau. 

He runs loads of rock, sand and gravel between his Charlestown site and his Bradford site. According to state police records in his most recent conviction, he offers to sell his product for a fraction of the going price. He sends some of his big diesel-guzzling trucks long distances to customers. 

Copar's latest quarry, formerly Morrones, off Route 91
next to the Pawcatuck

I'd love to see what his current prospectus looks like. 

In 1994, after one of his fraud convictions, the judge's sentence included the stipulation that Cocopard give a list of all his criminal offenses to any person he seeks to borrow money from in the future.

Here’s another mystery. Is the mortgage deed defective? Is it really a binding legal document? 

When I did my routine research, I examined the mortgage deed and fact-checked the key provisions. I noticed that the beneficiary of this deal is, quoting directly from the mortgage deed, “Copar Industries LLC, a Rhode Island limited company.”

Except no such company exists in Rhode Island. The actual legal names Copar has registered in Rhode Island are shown here:

Screen shot from the Rhode Island Secretary of State's corporate database

From George Comolli's website

Technical errors like this cause major problems and can even render a legal document such as this mortgage deed invalid. This is the kind of error that should be found in routine due diligence, certainly a necessity before pledging a valuable piece of land as collateral to co-sign a $500,000 loan. 

Westerly Granite's lawyer, family member George Comolli, is a very experienced and well-known lawyer in Westerly with business clients in Charlestown as well. Why such an easily-discovered error?

Is this latest $500,000 cash infusion an investment in expanded operations? Does that mean Copar plans to go ahead with the rumored acquisition of a third quarry site in our community? Or is the half-million an effort to keep Copar from collapsing under its already heavy load of debt?

Is this the next Copar acquisition?

Why is the Comolli family staking their own property to cover the loan of their tenant who is currently using and abusing that property? A tenant who has made George Comolli look very bad in the media?

I don’t have the hard evidence required to make an informed guess. 

Based on reviewing Cocopard’s personal and business past, it's hard to see him running Copar successfully and harder still to see him making good on the enormous debt he has run up. Yet, this mortgage deed has the Comollis pledging their own assets to cover Cocopard on a loan from a company controlled by Phil Armetta's lawyer.

What's your  theory about what's really going on?