12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 1, 2010
By
KAREN ROBINSON-JACOBS / The Dalllas Morning
News
– Six prime Dallas Cowboys season tickets and the
right to buy future tickets were auctioned to a Dallas-based ticket broker
Tuesday for $241,000.
The package – which includes those six seats and six parking passes
for this season and the right to buy tickets for those seats for 30 years
– was sold by the Internal
Revenue Service to help address a tax debt of more than $4.5 million owed
by Lending.com. Officials with Dallas-based Lending.com could not be reached
for comment.
After a 15-minute auction that attracted five registered bidders but only
two contestants, Hank Wendorf of Ticketsource.com prevailed in the rare bidding
for pro sports season passes.
By the time Wendorf pays the nearly $70,000 owed to the Cowboys, the total
will be about $311,000 – a slight discount off the original price of
$320,000.
Wendorf, who grew up in Texas and considers himself a big Cowboys fan, said
he still sees "value at that number."
"These seat options are not available from the Cowboys," said
Wendorf, whose 20-year-old company has other Cowboys Stadium seats near the new
additions. "I think it's a great opportunity for me to add to my
inventory.
"This is a difficult area of the stadium to find seats," he said
of the prime perch, which is in section C110, near the 40 and 50 yard lines,
behind the Cowboys' bench. "In my opinion, these are the best seats in the
stadium."
Wendorf said rather than trying to sell the package, he'll probably offer
seats a game at a time and keep the options.
Some C110 tickets already are going for premium prices. Tickets in that
section for Thursday's Miami Dolphins preseason game were
selling online Tuesday for $575.
Wendorf had no buyer's remorse.
"I think I know my business well enough to know if I paid the right price,"
he said. "I'm picking them up on my way home, and I'll start marketing
them tomorrow."
Bidding in the auction conducted by Darlene Shadday, an IRS property
specialist, began at $186,000, but the price quickly jumped to more than
$220,000.
Wendorf called bidding on the package "a no-brainer" for him. But
he did have a maximum price in mind.
As the bidding ping-ponged between Wendorf and another broker, "it was
getting close," Wendorf said.
The ticket package fell to the IRS after attempts to settle the debt failed,
said IRS spokesman Clay Sanford.
The auction notice lists the taxpayer as Lending.com Inc., a mortgage
lender. Shadday described the company as a proxy for its chief executive,
Douglas Van Arsdale.
Van Arsdale said the tickets "were not his, but [he] was using
them," Shadday said.
Doug Van Arsdale also was listed as the founder and chief executive of
Credit Solutions of America Inc., a debt settlement company with the same Park
Central address as Lending.com. An employee at Credit Solutions said Van
Arsdale was not available for comment.
Regulators in Texas and New York have accused the company of defrauding
consumers by failing to negotiate settlements with its customers' creditors.
