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A bitter chapter in the lives of Duane and Stephanie Smith has finally come to an end.
After nearly two years of heartbreak and suffering at the hands of Missouri contractor and con man Brian “Eddie” Sides, the defrauded family has finally made good on all of the contractors and businesses that were conned by their former business partner.
The Smiths, who have moved back to Missouri following the unraveling of their planned RV park Whispering Oaks, have also sold their previous property and business to a local family that plans to do right by local residents living in the area. Unlike Sides, the new owners of Whispering Oaks have obtained all of the proper permits needed to move forward with the park.
“Unfortunately, we still lost a great deal of money due to the actions of Mr. Eddie Brian Sides,” said Smith in an update email to the Observer.
The property had been sitting abandoned after Sides was publicly outed last year by the Observer as being a con artist that operated both in Missouri and Arkansas.
Sides is infamous for being sued by former Missouri AG Chris Koster in 2012 after defrauding Joplin tornado victims out of tens of thousands of dollars. Koster won his case against Sides in court, with Sides being ordered to pay Betty VanOstran $14,500, Annette Merritt $8,455.38, and Andrea Grissom $6,000 for not providing services.
To this day, Sides has yet to pay back the victims. The State of Missouri reopened the Joplin case against Sides in 2022 over his failure to pay.
The conman of Mallard Point
Sides caught the attention of local residents in Baxter County after he began performing construction on Whispering Oaks RV Park without pulling proper permits. At the time, the Smiths were co-owners with Sides and his wife and were acting as the financial backers for the park with the promise that Sides would eventually pay the family back half of the money that they had put up to get the business going.
Instead, Sides went on a spending spree, costing the Smith family some $334,384.12. And while the Smiths won their lawsuit against Sides to get that money back earlier this year, the family is still struggling as they await justice to catch up to Sides.
According to an Affidavit of Expenses filed in the Smiths suit against Sides, the con man committed multiple counts of wire fraud, theft, and document forgery. Duane Smith also alleged that at least one Baxter County contractor may have assisted Sides in stealing money from Smith and Whispering Oaks Luxury RV Park.
In 2022, Brian and Stacey Sides are alleged to have approached the Smiths with a proposal to become partners in an RV park business opportunity in Mountain Home, AR.
According to the affidavit, the Sides emphasized that the Smiths would not need to invest any money into the business, but rather provide good credit scores and financial credibility to support loan approval and financing.
For their part, the Sides allegedly offered to put $200,000 of investment money into the business to support operational costs during the construction phase. The funds were supposed to come from the Sides’ personal home, which was listed for sale.
The Smiths would later discover that Sides did not own the home he was living in. Instead, the house was owned by Sides’ MyPowerGrid LLC and another individual who was associated with the business. The money from the home, after it was sold, was split between Sides and the other unnamed individual.
None of the proceeds from the sale were deposited into a Whispering Oaks account as agreed upon.
In addition to not putting up the promised amount, Sides blew through an initial startup fund of $25,000 provided by the Smiths, creating a deficit in the RV parks’ checking account that jeopardized the bank loan the Smiths had procured for the property, in addition to the $191,000 that had already invested into the business.
The issues with loans didn’t stop there, despite communicating multiple times that he understood that additional loans would be needed for complete construction on the RV park, the con man refused to follow through on a new loan despite having presented a “Commitment Letter” to Century Bank of the Ozarks on April 11, 2023.
Both Brian and Stacey Sides would abandon Whispering Oaks after the Observer wrote an investigative piece into Sides’s history of running scams. In court, the Smiths alleged that the couple refused to make or contribute to the agreed-upon loan payments and refused to allow the couple to sell the RV park to recoup their losses.
While Sides has continued to skirt making loan payments to Century Bank of the Ozarks, court documents show that the alleged con man had no issues with creating fake invoices to pay off personal debts through check and wire fraud to a former business associate, John Hammersmith of Kimberling City, MO, with Whispering Oaks company funds.
Sides is also alleged to have used the Whispering Oaks construction account to pay “Johnny Sides” a personal debt. Sides appears to have attempted to pass the payment to Johnny Sides off as contracted work.
But Sides didn’t stop there.
According to bank statements, Sides appears to have gone on a personal spending spree with a Whispering Oaks debit card, withdrawing some $6,062.50 from ATMs in Joplin, MO, and Las Vegas, NV while visiting casinos. He also appears to have withdrawn some $7,705 from banks and ATMs in Branson, MO.
In addition, Sides used $1,252.27 in company money for personal haircuts, urgent care visits, personal RV space rental at The Chaparral RV Park, and maintenance on a pickup truck that he allegedly stole from Tom Nottle, another of Sides’ victims that came forward earlier this year.
The Smiths also allege that Sides continued to ask the family to pay contractors with their own money after they finished their work. The Smiths also state that the Sideses refused to make payments on equipment owned by Whispering Oaks, while also refusing to put park assets up for sale.
Sides also worked with Mitchel Woodcock, a local laborer in the Baxter County area, to funnel some $20,010 in company funds back into Sides’s pockets through an invoice payment scheme.
Other victims speak out
Following Sides’ abandonment of Whispering Oaks and his abuse of the Smith family, dozens of other families and individuals began to come forward to tell of their encounters with Sides.
Mark Feltrop, another Missouri man, said he ran afoul of Sides and his MyPowerGrid solar and generator company in 2022.
After seeing his business on Facebook Marketplace, Feltrop said he began discussing a solar panel system for his home with Sides. Things seemed normal at first, with Sides allegedly visiting his home and offering his opinion on what Feltrop needed.
Feltrop cut him a check for $49,000. The excuses, Feltrop said, quickly poured in.
After realizing that he wasn’t going to get his money back, Feltrop sued Sides in court. The judge in the case ordered Sides to pay nearly $70,000 for Feltrop’s wasted time and money. But Sides never paid up and instead began ducking his payments and court dates, prompting Feltrop to take him back to court to get what is owed to him.
That court case is still in limbo due to Sides invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination after felony charges were filed against him in Texas County, Missouri, by the county’s prosecuting attorney.
While Feltrop is seeking justice in the courtroom, Karen Nottle of Branson, Missouri is praying that Sides is eventually held to account.
Her father, Tom Nottle, was allegedly deceived into investing over $100,000 in Sides’s MyPowerGrid company as a partner. An elderly man in his 90s, Nottle suffers from memory issues and has allegedly fallen for Sides’s promises on several occasions, even going so far as to purchase Sides a $83,000 pickup truck after he was told it was needed to get his investment off the ground.
Sides allegedly promised to pay the truck note but quit paying after four payments. He then refused to return the truck and, according to Karen Nottle, worked with her father to dissolve the partnership and get the truck back.
After getting the truck back the first time, Sides allegedly returned for the truck a second time and successfully convinced Nottle to rent the truck to him behind his daughter’s back. Karen Nottle was told to come pick up the truck by the Stone County Sheriff after Sides was arrested for failing to appear in court in January.
Nottle was allegedly fooled for a final time after Sides convinced him to turn over a classic Volkswagen Beetle so that he could sell it on Nottle’s behalf for a 10% commission. Sides sold the car online and pocketed the cash. Karen Nottle said she was eventually able to track down the car and retrieve it. Allegedly, the Jefferson County Department of Motor Vehicle notified her that Sides had made fake titles for the car.
On the Arkansas side of the Ozarks, Sides has been allegedly working over people too.
One of those individuals is Theresa Douglas, a 70-year-old grandmother who is raising her six grandchildren after her daughter tragically passed away last year.
Douglas moved her RV over to Whispering Woods Luxury RV Park earlier last year after her daughter’s passing while waiting for the home she wanted to purchase to become available.
During her time at the park, Sides allegedly promised her to build a playground for her grandchildren and to eventually move her to a finished lot. Her trailer was left in a muddy lot next to an unearthed septic system. She said he also promised to build her a shed for her grandchildren’s toys and bicycles.
As time went on, Sides allegedly began pushing the grandmother to purchase a mini-split system after learning that one of her grandsons had nearly died from Croup.
Douglas said she eventually relented and gave Sides nearly $10,000 for the mini-split system. Sides also allegedly failed to pay the water and electric bills for the park, prompting Douglas to pay the bills herself.
While Douglas eventually moved on from the park, it wasn’t before another resident had issues with Sides. John Hart of Lakeview, AR, was convinced by Sides to give him two short-term loans for the completion of the park’s construction.
He was also convinced to make his RV available to the park for weekend rentals, ultimately resulting in his trailer being damaged on several occasions. At one point, Sides is alleged to have removed portions of the inside of Hart’s RV for the installation of the mini split in Douglas’s trailer.
Sides is alleged to have pocketed the money from the rental RV and not pay for damages. Hart said he never received his loan back and is out several thousands of dollars.
Another individual, Joe Dollar assisted Sides in getting materials for the mini split for Douglas’s trailer. Sides had scammed Dollar 20 years ago in Paragould while working as a contractor, costing the man tens of thousands of dollars.
Sides allegedly managed to convince Dollar that he turned his life around when seeking assistance on the mini split. Dollar did not receive payment from Sides. Sides also is alleged to have sold wall blocks to Dollar during their encounter at the RV park. Dollar’s check was cashed by Sides, but the company, Olson Precast in West Plains where Sides purchased the blocks went unpaid.
Lack of justice in Baxter County
While Duane Smith and his wife may have won their civil case against Sides in court, the most bitter part of their fight against the conman has been their inability to get law enforcement officials in Baxter County to hold the man who defrauded them of hundreds of thousands of dollars accountable.
Last year, after Smith realized that Sides had no intentions of ever keeping his promises, the then-local school teacher began seeking criminal charges against his former business partner.
Smith poured hours of his own time gathering evidence and witness testimony to turn over to Baxter County Prosecutor David Ethredge and the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office. The school teacher also spent hours researching and interviewing other victims of Sides in an attempt to help them find justice as well.
Smith even managed to convince some of Sides’s partners, like John Hammersmith, to partially admit to crimes such as wire fraud. Much of the evidence Smith collected was used to win his civil case against Sides in court.
Yet, despite all of his attempts to get Ethredge and the Sheriff’s Department to move on Sides, nothing has happened. In a September 11 email to the Observer, Smith said that he had not heard from Ethredge in four months.
In a brief conversation with the Observer this week, Ethredge said that he had not yet received an affidavit from the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office over the case and that two of the department’s best investigators do not believe that they could successfully bring charges against Sides due to his business relationship with the Smith family.
As business partners, Ethredge said Mr. Smith allowed Sides to have full access to the company’s accounts and continued to provide Sides money even after Sides was not following through on his promises.
Ethredge said he sympathizes with the Smith family over their situation and noted that Sides would most likely be going to prison in Missouri based on his discussions with the Missouri prosecutor who is overseeing Sides’ criminal case.
The prosecuting attorney said that even if he were to bring charges against Sides, the Smith family would most likely not be able to recoup the money owed to them by their former business partner.
Ethredge has long been a popular prosecutor and is highly praised for his dedication to the protection of children during abuse cases. He is also involved in assisting several local organizations that focus on providing healing and assistance to victims of crimes.
The multiple cases against Sides continue to play out in court.
