CINCINNATI — A company owned by Doug Evans must pay a locally-owned fitness facility over $22 million after a jury determined Evans and his company, BEE Holdings LP, engaged in fraudulent activity, according to a law firm and court documents.
Wolterman Law Office, he law firm representing the defendant, Revolution Fitness, said in a press release that Evans and his company unlawfully deprived the fitness facility from buying the property it's been leasing from Evans.
According to the lawsuit, Revolution Fitness has leased a property on Round Bottom Road, near Evans Landscaping, since 2014. That property was then owned by Evans' company, BEE Holdings. However, in July 2016, Evans transferred that property to a company owned his ex-wife Stephanie Evans, who was also named in the lawsuit.
Evidence presented at trial showed that, at that point, Evans and BEE Holdings told Banshee 3652, the company belonging to Stephanie, that Revolution Fitness had paid nothing toward rent, utilities, or other owed amounts for the past five months. Evans and BEE Holdings also failed to properly remit Revolution Fitness' payments to Banshee — $77,000 which had been paid to BEE Holdings, despite Evans' claims.
After that, in March 2018, Banshee 3652 then sold the property back to BEE Holdings without first notifying Revolution Fitness, or offering the business a right of first refusal to buy the property itself for equal or more money — something that was a contractual obligation written into Revolution Fitness' lease.
BEE Holdings bought the property back for $725,000 — then sold that same property to Forest Hills School District for $2.15 million, garnering a return of nearly 300%.
Revolution Fitness had expressed written interest in buying the facility it leased in February 2018.
"Doug Evans and his attorney never communicated Revolution Fitness' interest to Banshee and Banshee representatives would have considered selling to Revolution Fitness had they been aware of its interest in buying the property," reads a press release from Wolterman.
After a trial, a Hamilton County Common Pleas jury ruled in favor of Revolution Fitness and awarded it $22,294,967 in total damages; $14.8 million of that was punitive.
"What happened here was a textbook example of individuals acting in their own self-interest and ignoring the terms of a contract so they could enrich themselves," said Matthew Metzger, co-counsel for Revolution Fitness. "Doug Evans misled our client, took property out from under it and then flipped the property to Forest Hills School District for a massive profit. The jury saw through the defendants' excuses and held them accountable for their actions."
Evans was released from prison after serving six months of a 21-month sentence for minority contracting fraud in 2021.
Since then, he's faced multiple legal battles, including being accused of contempt multiple times by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. Yost sued Doug Evans in 2021 in the hopes of resolving Evans' decades worth of environmental violations, but three years later, health officials are still complaining about buried construction waste, unpermitted work, lack of cleanup, and pollution seeping into the Little Miami River at three Evans facilities near Newtown.
Despite that, Evans has won hundreds of thousands in government jobs since his minority contracting fraud conviction and prison sentence.
