Ex-Pace Airlines owner takes deal to reimburse employees $445,000 for insurance premiums [Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.]

April 18--William Rodgers Sr., the former co-owner of defunct Pace Airlines Inc., accepted a deal Thursday morning that allows him to reimburse about 150 Pace employees about $445,000 in unpaid medical claims and avoid jail time.

Rodgers, 62, appeared in Forsyth Superior Court, flanked by his two attorneys, Cheryl Andrews and Mark Calloway. He faced one count of willful failure to pay group health-insurance premiums to Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and 26 counts of willful failure to deliver notice to employees.

He faced a possible five to 20 months in prison on each count but Thursday morning, he entered a deferred prosecution program. As part of the program, he would pay $445,853 to about 150 employees who were affected by the cancellation of the health-insurance premiums. That will be paid out of an insurance policy within the next 21 days.

He also has to perform 200 hours of community service, which will be done in Missouri, where he lives now.

Rodgers will be on unsupervised probation for a year. If he complies with the terms of the agreement, the charges against him will be voluntarily dismissed.

The hearing was an anticlimactic end to a nearly four-year saga that saw the collapse of the company he took over in May 2009. Pace Airlines and its predecessors had been an anchor tenant at Smith Reynolds Airport for decades. Rodgers signed a promissory note to pay $9 million to the estate of Bob Brooks -- founder of the Hooters restaurant chain -- for stock in Pace Airlines LLC and Pace Airlines II LLC and take more than $6 million in liabilities.

Rodgers, however, never had the money, and the company collapsed four months after he took over. In September 2009, state insurance agents arrested Rodgers, and then in January 2012, he was indicted on the 27 charges.

The collapse of the company resulted in 423 employees -- including 300 in Winston-Salem -- losing their jobs. Before the company shut down, some workers were not paid as long as six weeks and many stayed on for fear that Pace would try to deny unemployment benefits to them if they quit.

When Rodgers first appeared in court about four years ago, a dozen former Pace employees followed him out of a courtroom and onto North Main Street outside the Forsyth County Hall of Justice, asking him questions about his management of the company. Today, Joe Chucci, whose son was a Pace employee, was in the courtroom. His son, Joey Chucci, died of terminal cancer in 2010 and his family had to scramble for other insurance when the health-insurance premiums were cancelled.

He said he had mixed feelings but he is glad that there's some closure now.

"If he carries out what he says he'll do, I have no problem with it," he said after the hearing.

mhewlett@wsjournal.com

(336) 727-7326

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