An employee returns from lunch at Amazon’s Fulfillment Center on March 19, 2019, in Thornton. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)
Former employees at an Amazon fleet company say its “corrupt” owner gave a no-show job to his girlfriend, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of company funds on personal expenses, and defrauded the government by writing that money off his business taxes.
“He fed at the company trough,” they wrote of Grant Gassaway in a Jan. 9 lawsuit.
Dracarys Fleet has about 80 employees at Amazon’s warehouse, 875 W. 64th Ave. It was founded in 2019 by Gassaway, who remains its sole owner, according to court records.
Last summer, the company sued former general manager Farra Shaw and former bookkeeper Traci Valentine, claiming they had “infiltrated” Dracarys Fleet, cooked its books, helped themselves to six figures in company cash, and nearly bankrupted the business.
But Shaw and Valentine are now countersuing both Dracarys Fleet and Gassaway for millions of dollars and telling a different story about the local company’s inner workings. They deny stealing a cent and say supposedly embezzled funds were actually taken by Gassaway.
“(He) used company money to pay his personal expenses in order to cheat and cut Ms. Shaw out of her profit-sharing compensation, to defraud the state and local tax authorities, and to defraud other creditors,” they say. “This is not just a case of sloppy bookkeeping.”
The duo claim that Gassaway’s lawsuit last year was designed to harass them as well as “to extricate money in any manner possible to help fund (Gassaway)’s excessive spending and spendthrift financial habits and the business he cannot keep afloat on his own.”
Lawyers for Gassaway and Dracarys — Maxwell Shaffer and Thomas Leland with the Leland Shaffer firm in Denver — declined to comment on Shaw and Valentine’s countersuit.
The former manager and bookkeeper are seeking more than $3 million from their previous employers for back pay, severance, defamation and emotional distress. They say Gassaway damaged their reputations after they resigned by referring to them as embezzlers.
“It’s time for you to stop being hateful,” Shaw emailed him in 2024. “What the hell Grant?”
An employee returns from lunch at Amazon’s Fulfillment Center on March 19, 2019, in Thornton. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)
Former employees at an Amazon fleet company say its “corrupt” owner gave a no-show job to his girlfriend, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of company funds on personal expenses, and defrauded the government by writing that money off his business taxes.
“He fed at the company trough,” they wrote of Grant Gassaway in a Jan. 9 lawsuit.
Dracarys Fleet has about 80 employees at Amazon’s warehouse, 875 W. 64th Ave. It was founded in 2019 by Gassaway, who remains its sole owner, according to court records.
Last summer, the company sued former general manager Farra Shaw and former bookkeeper Traci Valentine, claiming they had “infiltrated” Dracarys Fleet, cooked its books, helped themselves to six figures in company cash, and nearly bankrupted the business.
But Shaw and Valentine are now countersuing both Dracarys Fleet and Gassaway for millions of dollars and telling a different story about the local company’s inner workings. They deny stealing a cent and say supposedly embezzled funds were actually taken by Gassaway.
“(He) used company money to pay his personal expenses in order to cheat and cut Ms. Shaw out of her profit-sharing compensation, to defraud the state and local tax authorities, and to defraud other creditors,” they say. “This is not just a case of sloppy bookkeeping.”
The duo claim that Gassaway’s lawsuit last year was designed to harass them as well as “to extricate money in any manner possible to help fund (Gassaway)’s excessive spending and spendthrift financial habits and the business he cannot keep afloat on his own.”
Lawyers for Gassaway and Dracarys — Maxwell Shaffer and Thomas Leland with the Leland Shaffer firm in Denver — declined to comment on Shaw and Valentine’s countersuit.
The former manager and bookkeeper are seeking more than $3 million from their previous employers for back pay, severance, defamation and emotional distress. They say Gassaway damaged their reputations after they resigned by referring to them as embezzlers.
“It’s time for you to stop being hateful,” Shaw emailed him in 2024. “What the hell Grant?”
