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Saturday, November 6, 2021

STOLEN VALOR IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE—After Paying $250,000 In 2020 For North Central Academy's Mancelona Building, Grand Rapids “Property Developer” Robert Munger Flips Schoolhouse To Bay City Academy... For $500,000! Munger's Brazen, False Claim Of Overseas Army Deployment Trumped By Only By $5.0 Million Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

I'm convinced the Michigan Department of Treasury should rebrand, and launch under the name of my favorite Western swing band: asleep at the wheel.

The Bay City Academy, under supervision by the Michigan Treasury since 2018 due to its (ahem!) financial stress, recently dropped its June 2021 Financial Statement revealing yet another noxious nugget: the charter school founded by convicted felon Steven Ingersoll purchased its North Central Academy Mancelona location for $500,000, financing it with a $300,000 down payment and a $200,000 10-year land contract extended by seller, Robert Munger's Alba Ventures, LLC.


 

The Mancelona building's seller, Robert Munger, bought the schoolhouse on April 29, 2020 for $250,000, financing it with a $375,900 mortgage.

Munger is a Grand Rapids-based "developer" who declared bankruptcy in 2009, stiffing his creditors out of nearly $5.0 million.


Wonder if the Bay City Academy's Board realized who it was getting in bed with...in a real estate sense?

Here's what I've discovered: Munger has a past.

In addition to dabbling in property development, Munger has a full-time gig as the CEO of  Exodus Place, a Grand Rapids-based transitional housing facility for men.

Munger publicly boasts about his "military service" as a U. S. Army officer in Honduras, even including the assertion in his personal resume.

A Grand Rapids Business Journal profile of Munger promulgated this colorful terminological inexactitude:

"Munger was commissioned in the U. S. Army in 1985 when he was 20 years old. He was 21 when he was deployed to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as a fire support officer directing a team of "forward observers" charged with bringing "indirect" fire into a target.

This was at a time when the United States was establishing a military presence in Honduras to support the Honduran army waging a campaign against Marxist-Leninist militias.

During a training exercise, the Honduran fire direction team plotted Munger's location on their map, which should have served only as a reference point to calculate the actual target's angle, Instead, their cannon fired a shell in Munger's immediate vicinity. The explosion's percussion propelled Munger into the air.

"I didn't know what hit me," said Munger. "I still remember the percussion. It was like an invisible wall lifting you off the ground."

That wall was "invisible" because it didn't exist.

Suspicious of Munger's claims, I contacted the Army's Public Affairs office and ultimately received his NGB Form 22. 

Although Munger served honorably in the Michigan National Guard between May 1985-May 1988 while attending Western Michigan University, his official service record, shown below, confirms Munger never left the country for an overseas deployment...and was never commissioned as a U. S. Army officer.

Munger financed the $250,000 purchase of the Mancelona building by his "Alba Ventures, LLC" entity with a $375,900 mortgage.

If Munger defaults on that mortgage, the Bay City Academy loses every dollar it paid on its ten-year land contract.

Asleep at the wheel much?


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