Brothers killed in Parker murder-suicide owed $4.4M to investors, lawsuits allege

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The Alfred A. Arraj United States Courthouse in downtown Denver. (BusinessDen file)

The two brothers who died in a murder-suicide in Parker last month were facing a slew of lawsuits alleging they defrauded people of more than $4.4 million — and skipped a federal court hearing in one of those cases hours before the shooting, court records show.

Grant Brunner, 55, and Gregory Brunner, 48, died Nov. 28 in what Parker police said was a murder-suicide near the Holiday Inn on Cottonwood Drive, the Douglas County Coroner’s Office confirmed Tuesday.

Police spokesman Josh Hans on Tuesday declined to say who carried out the shooting, and would not offer any details about how the incident unfolded, citing an ongoing investigation.

But the Brunners faced at least eight open lawsuits in the last four months from 12 people who claimed the brothers failed to pay back $4.48 million in business loans, court records show. Generally, the lawsuits allege the brothers, through their company SRE Capital LLC, solicited loans from people they knew — largely friends or social connections — on the promise they’d pay back the loans with interest or profit after some business dealing, usually in real estate.

The brothers failed to pay back the money, the lawsuits generally allege. One lawsuit likened the Brunner’s business model to a “Ponzi scheme.”

The two brothers were scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado at 10 a.m. Nov. 28 for a hearing in one of the lawsuits but didn’t show up, according to court records. A separate, new lawsuit also was filed that same day, court records show.

Parker police said the murder-suicide happened at 12:47 p.m. Nov. 28.

An attorney who previously represented the brothers did not return a request for comment Tuesday. Grant Brunner’s wife, Stephanie, declined to comment when reached by phone Tuesday. Gregory Brunner’s wife, Diana, could not be reached for comment.

One couple loaned the brothers $200,000 in February on the promise it would be used to buy a house that would be resold at a profit by the end of March, with Grant Brunner telling the couple that the new buyer already was lined up, according to a lawsuit they filed in October. The Brunner brothers promised to return $240,000 to the couple by June, the lawsuit alleges.

Grant Brunner was a friend of the woman’s late ex-husband, her husband said. He spoke to The Denver Post on the condition of anonymity to avoid additional publicity about the situation. He said his wife hadn’t spoken to Grant Brunner for years when Grant reached out about the investment opportunity. The couple pulled the money from their retirement fund to make the deal.

Grant Brunner at first seemed to be “a nice guy, a straight shooter” who “got in over his head,” the husband said.

“But after a while, we started to doubt that feeling, like, ‘Maybe he is ripping us off,’” the man said Tuesday. “… There was always a long-winded explanation of what they’re trying to do to get the deal right. It involved other properties, doing this or that. It wasn’t, ‘This fell through, sorry, you’re screwed.’ He was always real respectful, and, ‘Hey, I’m sorry about this, and the way it’s working out.’”

Most of the investments that the Brunners solicited ranged between $100,000 and $250,000, according to the lawsuits, but one man, an old high school friend of Grant Brunner who was close with Brunner’s family, loaned the pair more than $3 million — “the majority of his and his wife’s savings for their retirement,” according to a lawsuit filed in Arapahoe County District Court in November.

Parker police said they had not dealt with Greg or Grant Brunner before the shooting. Detectives know about the lawsuits and they’re “part of the investigation,” Hans said.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office was in the “early stages” of an investigation into the brothers when they died, spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said. The investigation by the office’s financial fraud unit is now closed because of their deaths, he said.

A FBI spokeswoman declined to say whether the agency had investigated the brothers for any financial crimes before their deaths, and a spokeswoman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said the agency did not have any investigations related to the brothers.

This story was originally published by The Denver Post, a BusinessDen news partner. Denver Post reporters Jacob Factor and Katie Langford contributed to this report.