FBI targets businessman with ties to St. Mary’s professor

He said he owned a bank that would pay an unheard-of 14 percent interest on deposits. He also pitched would-be investors on an export business he said would make a lot of money selling goods through his network in the Middle East.

But court records tell a far different story — that Tannous, 38, lived off an allowance from his parents and the earnings and credit of his now-former wife and filed for bankruptcy in early 2021 to shield himself from investors when they tried to collect.

The FBI has been investigating Tannous for more than a year after receiving complaints from several investors who each claim they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to him, sources told the San Antonio Express-News. The agency has forwarded a preliminary case to federal prosecutors.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Antonio also wants to know more about Tannous’ relationship with Stephen Sheppard, who served as dean of St. Mary’s University School of Law from June 2014 to June 2019.

In an unrelated matter, the Texas Rangers are investigating Sheppard — who became a law professor at the school after stepping down as dean — over allegations that he sexually assaulted a law student in his office in October. University officials barred him from campus, and the Rangers searched his office April 12, removing carpeting, a desktop computer and other items. 

Sheppard’s attorneys, Cynthia Orr and Gerry Goldstein, have said he is innocent and that they expect “his complete vindication.”

Sheppard served as Tannous’ lawyer in a child custody battle with Tannous’ former wife. He also shared office space with Tannous in a building near Boerne owned by country music star George Strait, and he set up a trust with Tannous as the beneficiary shortly after Tannous filed for personal bankruptcy protection in March 2021.

Sheppard, 60, is not accused of violating any federal criminal laws, and his lawyers say he’s done nothing wrong. Orr said Sheppard only worked for Tannous as his lawyer and operated within the bounds of the law. She added that she was not aware of Sheppard being “any kind of partner” in Tannous’ business ventures.

Prosecutors are mum about the case. “We do not comment on investigations,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Surovic said.

In May, the State Bar of Texas’ disciplinary arm closed an inquiry into Sheppard’s actions in Tannous’ child custody battle, the Express-News has learned.

The bar’s Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel found that Sheppard committed professional misconduct, in part because he acted as a lawyer for Tannous even though he was also a possible witness in the custody case — a conflict of interest.

The disciplinary counsel issued Sheppard a private reprimand — one of the mildest punishments for lawyers. The public is not notified of private reprimands.

The ‘prince’

Sheppard entered Tannous’ orbit in November 2020, a year after Tannous’ divorce had been finalized. They met at the office of a legal finance company, Sheppard said in an April 2022 court filing in the custody battle.

Records in Tannous’ bankruptcy show that he had gone to Justice For Me, a San Antonio company that helps people who can’t afford a lawyer by providing loans, in November 2020. Justice For Me submitted a claim in the bankruptcy, saying Tannous owed it almost $13,000.

His financial struggles belie his image as a successful businessman.

A blog post in 2017 said he started out in “Lebanon-Dubai UAE,” the son of a prince and princess, and that he earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in international business at Cyprus College in the Middle East. The post also said he was fluent in six languages and started his business career at 19, developing “several multi-million dollar ventures” before his 20th birthday.

None of those claims and others in the post could be independently verified.

It’s unclear if Tannous or someone else wrote the post, the sole entry on the “Prince Alex Tannous” blog.

He declined to answer emailed questions from the Express-News.

He launched Avaline Holding Corp. in 2004, described in the post as “his largest global investment and financial success.”

An Avaline subsidiary “is presently one of the leading sales, marketing and distributors of food and beverages in the world,” it said. “It is likely that most of the general world population has consumed one or more of Avaline products that are sold within hotels, restaurants, food chains, bakeries, hospitals, retail chains as well as airlines around the world.” 

A LinkedIn page for Avaline includes a link to avalineholding.com, but the website is not active.

The 2017 blog post said Avaline signed an exclusive agreement to bring Warner Bros.’ “Superman Energy Drink” in 2013 to the Middle East. But Tannous said in a court document that he traveled to California in May 2015 to meet with the film and entertainment company about licensing the Superman name.

Warner Bros. wouldn’t say whether it ever executed a licensing deal with Avaline.

“We are declining to comment on this one,” a Warner Bros. spokeswoman said in email.

Coming to America

Saying in a court document that he was attracted to the “American business style,” Tannous relocated to the United States from the Middle East in November 2015. He chose San Antonio because “it was an economic boom in business development,” the 2017 blog post said. He checked into a Staybridge Suites extended stay hotel. 

Tannous called himself a diplomat and claimed diplomatic immunity for any crime except murder, a woman who testified in his child custody battle said. But he does not appear on any of the State Department’s lists of diplomats between 2017 and 2020.

San Antonio attorney Alfonso Cabañas, whose clients include wealthy Mexican executives who live in San Antonio, said Tannous began recruiting investors in the North Side communities of Sonterra, Stone Oak and the Dominion. He drove around in a Mercedes S500 series car with a man Cabañas believed was his bodyguard.

Tannous carried business cards identifying him as “Prince Alex Tannous.”

“He claimed to have a bank that was paying ridiculous interest rates,” said Cabañas, who witnessed Tannous’ sales pitches. “He also claimed he had an import/export company.”

Cabañas said he did not invest with Tannous and that neither did his clients.

Tannous later ran afoul of Texas’ banking regulators over his claims that he operated a bank. Banking Commissioner Charles Cooper issued a cease-and-desist order against Tannous in 2018 for engaging in banking without a charter, a violation of state law. Tannous was ordered to stop using the name EBank Holdings and similar monikers.

‘Foremost venture’

After less than a year in San Antonio, Tannous made “significant strides in building new business in Texas,” the 2017 blog post said. The “foremost venture” was an agreement between Avaline and San Antonio spine and cosmetic surgeon Steven Cyr’s OsteoCorps LLC.

Cyr’s wife met Tannous through mutual friends at the Horseshoe Bay Country Club in the Hill Country in 2016. Tannous showed Cyr news releases and pictures of Avaline’s products, including the Superman drink. 

The doctor wanted to launch a line of nutritional juices and milk products tied to superheroes and super villains that he created to teach kids about their bodies, science and the arts. He and his staff visited local schools dressed as the characters.

Tannous offered to help “make this dream a reality,” the doctor had recounted. They formed a partnership, with Avaline owning a 51 percent stake and OsteoCorps holding the rest.

Cyr, in an interview, said he did his best to vet Tannous and found nothing suspicious.

Tannous convinced Cyr to invest $233,000 to get the venture started. It was all the money Cyr and his wife had in their savings.

Tannous brought juice samples for Cyr to taste, but no juices or other drinks were ever developed. Cyr said he and his wife lost their $233,000.

Cyr wrote about the experience in his 2022 memoir, “Cutthroat: A Surgeon’s Fight against Big Government, Corrupt Businessmen, and a Broken Healthcare System.”

“This ‘Prince’ was nothing but a Prince of Thieves,” he wrote.

Cyr said the FBI contacted him about Tannous four months ago.

Other alleged victims

Others claim they were duped by Tannous, too.

Marc De Spiegeleire, who lives in his native Belgium, said he and his father lost $700,000 to Tannous about a decade ago.

“I took action against him in Dubai because our ‘business deal’ was there, long before he was in the US,” De Spiegeleire wrote in an email. “But the system in the UAE ‘works’ differently, and I am measuring my words … so no success either besides thrown away money on a lawyer.

“I can’t take any action against him in the US and he knows it,” he added.

Peter Paulo Azcue Attoloni is one of three individuals from a Miami condominium complex who claim they were taken by Tannous.

“He is a fraud who never upholds his word,” Azcue wrote in a letter attached to his $27,000 claim in Tannous’ personal bankruptcy case. Azcue, who said he invested with Tannous and his brother in 2019, described an Avaline subsidiary as a “fake company.”

“Alex raises money from marks all over the world under fraudulent terms,” Azcue wrote in an Aug. 30, 2021, letter to a bankruptcy judge in San Antonio that is in the case file. “He and his family are in the ‘business’ of stealing as much money as possible from innocent people.”

The marriage

Tannous had been living in San Antonio only a couple of weeks when he spotted Angelica Albanese — who had emigrated from Honduras in 1997 — in a coffee shop and introduced himself, he recounted in a 94-page court document that Sheppard might have helped him craft.

(Sheppard said in an April 2022 court document that he had prepared a series of court motions for Tannous that included a “long narrative” that set out the legal conditions for the restoration of Tannous’ parental rights.)

Within a few weeks of their first encounter, Tannous said, Albanese asked him to move in with her and her three children. By the end of January 2016, they had wed. Tannous, an Arab Catholic, insisted they receive matrimonial rites in a Catholic church later that year.

The couple’s only child, a daughter, was born Jan. 10, 2017.

Albanese, a real estate agent, filed for divorce before their daughter had turned 2.

Tannous “has defrauded (Albanese), and several other individuals, in the amount of several hundred thousand dollars, possibly closer to one million dollars, and he is facing lawsuits for some of those frauds,” Albanese said in her Aug. 15, 2018, divorce petition.

The next month, Tannous filed his own divorce petition. Albanese fired back five days later with even more allegations against her estranged husband in an amended petition, accusing him of using her credit to advance his startups and hosting swanky business dinners and trips at her expense. 

A judge issued a divorce decree in November 2019, but their courtroom battles were far from over.

The professor

A year after their divorce was finalized, another judge found Tannous in contempt of court and out of compliance with a child support order. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail, but avoided incarceration by posting a $20,000 cash bond, court records show. He was required to be supervised during visits with his daughter because he was deemed a flight risk.

In February 2021, Sheppard filed a motion asking for court permission to represent Tannous in the case. 

Before a judge allowed Sheppard to step in as counsel, Tannous in March 2021 filed the 94-page motion in which he argued he wasn’t a flight risk. 

In the motion, Tannous also asked to see his daughter unsupervised, noting he had spent nearly $150,000 on the visits. The court had required him to pay someone to supervise the visits, at a cost that he said was as much as $500 an hour.

Tannous also disclosed that he had just filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy reorganization.

“Alex has taken significant steps to rebuild his career as an investor, businessman and employer,” he wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “This life came to a grinding halt with the shrinkage of his investments during his marriage and with this court’s redistribution of his investments in its partition of the marital community’s assets.

“Those losses, collectively, led to his inability to access funds that he previously relied upon from Dubai,” he added. “With the steps he has taken to rebuild his career, he has returned to the plans that led him to the United States and, with needed modifications, to stage their implementation. This reboot of his business has led to the restoration of his access to capital in Dubai.”

Tannous said he “revived his role with his company, Equico Enterprise,” described as an energy technology company. A web address he provided isn’t active, and little else could be found about the business. 

In April 2021, after Sheppard officially took over as Tannous’ lawyer, Sheppard sent a letter to then-Judge Aaron Haas that said Albanese’s lawyers “succeeded in creating a false narrative that he is a con man that would kidnap the child and flee the country with her to keep her from her mother.” 

Disqualification

A little more than two weeks after a judge approved Tannous’ request for Sheppard to represent him, Albanese sought to disqualify the lawyer from the case.

She alleged that Sheppard was Tannous’ business partner as well as his lawyer in the custody case and that his dual role “will cause actual prejudice.”

Albanese said they jointly developed Equico, according an April 2021 court document, and that Equico’s sole purpose was to show the court that Tannous had a “financial reason” to remain in the country.   

“You wonder, why do you have a guy who is the dean (emeritus) of a law school getting involved with a guy like that — a scammer?” said lawyer Miguel Ortiz, who filed the motion to remove Sheppard from the child custody case.

In arguing against his disqualification, Sheppard said he was “one of the few (lawyers) who can or will work pro bono” for Tannous.

A search of court records revealed that Sheppard had no other cases in state District Court in San Antonio.

He didn’t persuade Judge Cynthia Maria Chapa. She issued a ruling disqualifying him June 22, 2021.

Tannous challenged her ruling.

“Mr. Sheppard is a law professor,” his motion stated. “He is working on this case pro bono, because he says I have been treated unfairly, and he is sick to see his local court enter illegal and unconstitutional orders.”

Despite his disqualification, Sheppard filed a court document in April 2022 saying he was representing Tannous and continuing to assist him in preparing for court hearings. The professor said he “moderated” between his client and the supervisors who watched him while he visited his daughter. He also said he counseled Tannous in his efforts to develop new business relationships so Tannous wouldn’t be viewed as a flight risk.

Sheppard disclosed that he had advanced money for Tannous to pay court-ordered costs and expenses related to his daughter “to help him avoid the loss of visitation,” adding that was permitted under state rules governing lawyers.

The professor also revealed that Albanese had filed a complaint with the State Bar of Texas’ disciplinary arm, alleging at least 12 grounds for disciplinary action against him. It’s that complaint that led to the recent finding that Sheppard had committed professional malpractice.

In May 2022, then-Judge Cathleen Stryker found that Tannous had “taken specific steps” to travel with his daughter outside the country and that he “was not initially forthcoming about travel documents in his possession.” The judge ordered him to post a $150,000 bond before he could see his child again.

Tannous sent a $150,000 personal check to the Bexar County district clerk. However, the clerk’s office doesn’t accept personal checks and returned it Feb. 28. It doesn’t appear that he has posted the bond.

The bankruptcy

Despite the financial assistance Sheppard provided, Tannous’ bankruptcy case didn’t list the former law school dean as a creditor.

Tannous had filed for Chapter 13 protection in February 2021. A subsequent court filing showed that he was insolvent, listing assets of almost $113,000 and more than $866,000 in debts. Creditors, including some investors who alleged that they had been defrauded by Tannous, filed more than $1.4 million in claims.

A 2020 Lexus LX valued at $110,000 accounted for most of his assets. A Mercedes GLE 350 had been repossessed prior to the filing.

Tannous valued his personal financial assets at $207.46 and his dog at $1. He also listed malpractice claims against some of his former divorce lawyers.

The only source of income he reported was “help from his family.” They provided him with about $391,000 from 2019 to the bankruptcy filing.

As for Avaline, the company that reportedly brought him considerable financial success before he moved to San Antonio, Tannous said in bankruptcy papers that his tenure as CEO had ended in 2019 and that a brother owned the business.

The Chapter 13 trustee administering the case sought to convert it to a Chapter 7 liquidation. Among other reasons, the trustee said Tannous had not sought bankruptcy protection “in good faith.” He had proposed paying $10 a month on the Lexus, for instance.

He also listed as “unknown” the values of five of his businesses, while valuing Equico Enterprise at $100. Equico reported no income and nearly $3,500 in monthly expenses. The trustee had requested a business plan for Equico but never received one.

San Antonio paralegal Linda Spain, in a letter addressed to the bankruptcy judge, said she had been employed by Sheppard or Tannous, or both around the time of the bankruptcy. She said it took her two days “to realize something underhanded was going on” and that she was a “decoy for a nonexistent business that Alex Tannous told the court he had,” referring to Equico.

She also said she found evidence that Sheppard was paying Tannous’ child support.

During a February 2022 court hearing, it was revealed that Sheppard acted as the trustee of two trusts for which Tannous was a beneficiary. The second trust was created after the bankruptcy filing. Tannous, however, testified that he did not contribute any assets to the second trust.

At another hearing later that month, Tannous’ bankruptcy lawyer told the judge his client was receiving money from his parents to pay his living expenses, car payments, taxes and child support. But his mother and father might cut him off, attorney Robert Vanhelmelrijck said, according to a court transcript.

Instead of converting the case to a Chapter 7, the parties agreed in April 2022 that the bankruptcy case would be dismissed and Tannous would be barred from filing again for one year.

Back in court

Last month, Tannous was back in state District Court — via video — for a hearing set by Charles Verdict, one of his former divorce lawyers who has been attempting to collect more than $26,000 in legal fees.

Tannous, who said he was calling in from Dubai, told Judge Norma Gonzales that he was having trouble finding a lawyer to represent him. He added that he hadn’t seen his daughter in 16 months.

“So I believe I have the right to see my daughter before having to pay any attorneys fees from 2020,” he said, adding he was not avoiding paying anyone.

The judge granted Verdict’s request for fees. Gonzales then told Tannous the judgment didn’t prevent him from working out a payment plan with Verdict.

Tannous offered a parting shot.

“Even if he got the judgment, there is no payment coming to him,” Tannous said. “I’m not there, and my daughter is more important than anything right now.”

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