Rogers Businessman Burned Feet, Bridges

Landlords and former business partners are holding the bag. And in that bag is about $1 million in delinquent lease payments, broken promises and bad blood.

In the wake of the demise of a once-promising foot clinic named Prevention Plus, there are plenty of people pointing fingers, and they all point to the same person — Hunter Burroughs, 33, a Rogers businessman who, in his bid to go big, went broke instead.

At its height, Prevention Plus, which began as Feet Plus, had 11 clinics in Oklahoma and Arkansas, employed more than 100 people and treated patients for diabetic foot ailments as well as neuropathy, a nerve disorder caused by diabetes.

The business was doing so well that its owner, Burroughs, could afford to fly around in a prop plane flown by his own pilot. He could afford to own two houses — one in the Liberty Bell addition and another in the Pinnacle subdivision. And then there were the vacations to exotic places both north and south of the border.

All that ended last year, when, Burroughs said, his company was overrun with auditors from Medicare. As the auditors challenged claim after claim, the money started to dry up. His clinics began to close, leases were abandoned and by October, Feet Plus/Prevention Plus was no more.  

“Everybody left the ship, but someone has to go down with the ship,” Burroughs said.   

 

From Here to Infinity

These days, Burroughs’ would-be creditors — and there are plenty of them — are waiting to see if he will pay them back or if he will liquidate their claims in a bankruptcy.

Burroughs said it doesn’t really matter. His fortune is all gone and so is his reputation. Feet Plus/Prevention Plus ended in disaster, he said, so he’s trying to move on as a minority partner and consultant with Infinity Compounding Solutions, a new pharmacy in Bentonville.

As a member of Infinity Pharmacy Ownership Group, Burroughs was party to the purchase of the property earlier this year at 1204 S.E. 28th St., where the pharmacy is located.

But not so fast, say those who dealt with Burroughs during the Feet Plus/Prevention Plus era. If he can afford to move into the pharmaceutical industry, then he can at least afford to pay the bills from yesteryear.

One of those people is Dr. Gordon Laird, an Oklahoma physician who in 2010 sold his share in Feet Plus/Prevention Plus to Burroughs and his then-partner, Springdale entrepreneur Bert Sanchez, according to a demand letter drafted by Laird’s attorney.

In the letter, Laird said Burroughs and Sanchez signed an $800,000 promissory note, but after a year’s worth of intermittent payments, a balance of $701,000, plus interest in the amount of $27,000, remained.

The ownership timeline is not entirely clear, but by the end of 2011, Burroughs was the owner of Feet Plus/Prevention Plus, and the obligation to pay down the company’s debt was his.

To this day, the amount claimed by Laird has not been paid. Laird said he is considering a lawsuit, but his attorneys have told him it might be difficult to get anything out of Burroughs.

“My attorneys think we can’t get to the money because he has it hidden,” Laird said. “When someone owes you that kind of money, it hurts.” 

Laird has the biggest known claim against Burroughs, but not the only one. Oklahoma billing clerk Kathy Boss, who along with Laird founded Feet Plus, said Burroughs promised to buy her out to the tune of $300,000, but only paid a third of that.

“He owes me a lot of money,” said Boss, referring to the $200,000 she said is due. “I’m one of the people who wants to know why he could buy property in Bentonville.”

Like the others, Boss said she has yet to file suit because she was told that it might be difficult, if not impossible, to get anything out of Burroughs.

Looking back on how Feet Plus/Prevention Plus rose and fell, Boss said she sees the reason plain and clear. Feet Plus was an Oklahoma company that had clinics in small towns in northeast Oklahoma. But the company expanded into Arkansas with the arrival of Sanchez, and a few months later, Burroughs.

“Hunter [Burroughs] was the money man who was brought in by Bert [Sanchez],” Boss said. “They wanted to grow the company, and they did, but they did it too fast.”

 

Buried in Burroughs

Sanchez, who has since resurfaced with Axis Healthcare, a family practice with four locations in Oklahoma, said Burroughs bulled his way into Feet Plus/Prevention Plus, and in short order, made his presence felt in a bad way.

“He came in as the finance guy, and six months later, he wanted to run the whole thing,” said Sanchez, who split with Burroughs in mid-2011. “I walked away. We had some business differences on the way things should be done.”

Sanchez said he’s still bitter about how things turned out with Feet Plus/Prevention Plus. It was a good company, he said, that improved a lot of people’s lives. He said he feels a twinge of sadness each time he drives by an old Feet Plus/Prevention Plus site and sees the doors shuttered.

But, Sanchez said, Burroughs got what he wanted — control of the company. And that was the problem. By the end of 2011, when Burroughs was the principal at Feet Plus/Prevention Plus, the auditors arrived. And when they did, it was his problem and nobody else’s.

“When the reimbursements were going well, the clinics were doing well,” Burroughs said. But, he added, when the auditors started doing their thing, Feet Plus/Prevention Plus went south in a hurry. “We tried to hang on, but I stayed in it too long,” he said.

Gayle Lee, senior director of health, finance and quality at the Virginia-based American Physical Therapy Association, said companies like Feet Plus/Prevention Plus don’t stand a chance when the auditors dig in.

If auditors find a trend in billing that raises questions, the auditors ask for more records, placing a “huge administrative burden” on a company.

If a company is placed on what’s called “pre-payment review,” collecting on claims is virtually impossible, Lee said.

 

Sunsets in Belize

While Burroughs would not comment in detail on what the auditors found in his billing records, he did say that by the time his company shut down, there were more clerks assigned to fetching records for the auditors than there were clerks filing claims for payments.

While Burroughs saw the end coming, he didn’t necessarily communicate that information to his landlords. In at least two instances, Feet Plus/Prevention Plus was there one day and gone the next. One such instance was with Rex Gustin, who leased to Burroughs in Eureka Springs.

“I found out from his help that he was closing down, and he did, but he never gave me notice,” Gustin said. “He did pretty good until last October, and then he bailed out.”

Gustin said Burroughs owes him as much as $18,000 on the remaining lease, and he has sent Burroughs a letter demanding the money.

Dr. Jonathan Parker, who leased to Burroughs in Tontitown, said Burroughs owes him about $21,000, and he has also sent Burroughs a demand letter.

Sam Allen, who leased to Burroughs in the Tulsa suburb of Skiatook, said Burroughs owes him nearly $24,000 on an abandoned lease.

Gustin, like the other men who had business dealings with Burroughs, said the ordeal has left him with a foul taste in his mouth.

“He [Burroughs] is not a man of good character and he doesn’t fulfill his obligations,” Gustin said. “He’s wandering around trying to find loopholes in the system to make a living. He’s a user. A ‘me’ guy.”

Gustin said that when Burroughs was at the pinnacle of his success, he enjoyed the trappings of wealth — perhaps a little too much.

“He was always on vacation,” Gustin said. “Denver. Skiing. Mexico. I got more information from his people than I did from him. He was never around.”

Boss, Laird and Sanchez all said Burroughs had access to a prop plane, employed his own pilot and made frequent trips to Belize. Laird said Burroughs even flew to Oklahoma and picked him up for a meeting back in Arkansas when the two were talking about going into business together.

“He was a good salesman,” Laird said. “He said he was a man of God. His god is money.”