Who bought the gas station? Trail leads to Nigerian law firm

The City’s years-long effort to clean up an abandoned gas station on Main Street may have hit another speed bump with the discovery that the elusive buyer of the property may be a Nigerian company disguising itself as a Texas holding company.

The buyer, listed as GFF Texas Holdings LLC, bought the gas station at 301 East Main Street last December for $17,000 at a county foreclosure sale and agreed to pay an additional $23,000 in back taxes, remove two huge piles of illegally dumped tires and remediate two underground gas tanks.

City Councilmembers reacted with incredulity when they discussed the county’s sale of the property at a Jan. 7 meeting. They had been prepared to take ownership of the property so as not to lose a $41,000 state grant the City won last year to remove about 10 trailers’ worth of passenger and commercial vehicle tires from the property beside the First Baptist Church of Olney. The state grant could not be used to clean up private property and multiple attempts to sell the property at county foreclosure auctions had failed so the Council decided to keep it. The Council was stunned when GFF Texas Holdings unexpectedly bought the property.

“We were all incredibly shocked that it sold,” City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon said at the time.

In the months since the sale, GFF Texas Holdings has not responded to calls from the Olney Police Department, which handles code enforcement, to explain its plan for cleaning up the gas station, Police Chief Dan Birbeck told the Council last month.

The Council advised OPD to start ticketing the station daily for code violations until they got a response. That’s when Olney’s new code enforcement officer, Corporal Joe Logan, began digging and discovered that GFF Texas Holdings might not be what it seems.

A search of the Texas Comptroller’s taxable entities showed that GFF Texas Holdings is owned by a series of shell corporations registered in Houston that all lead back to a purported law firm in Lagos, Nigeria. GFF Texas Holdings registered with the state on Aug. 16, 2021, and listed the Cook Legal Group at 12505 Memorial Drive in Houston as its registered agent, the entity that serves as GFF’s official point of contact with the State of Texas. Cook Legal Group registered to do business in Texas in 2012 and lists as its registered agent IV SLP PC at 790 West Sam Houston Pkwy North, Suite 202 in Houston as its address. IV SLP PC lists as its registered agent Synergy Law Partners LLLP at the same West Sam Houston Parkway address. A Google Maps search shows the address as a shopping mall that also contains an AT&T store, a Mexican restaurant, and a bank branch in the same building. A tax preparer and storage facility share the same suite – 202 – with GFF, according to Google Maps. The Comptroller’s database also lists IVP SLP PC’s address as the Memorial Drive office shared by the Cook Legal Group. That location appears to be a three-story strip mall with restaurants, a title company, and clothing stores on the ground level. Cook Legal Group did not return multiple calls for comment.

Although Synergy Law Partners does not appear to be registered with the Texas Secretary of State, an internet search reveals a company of the same name operating in Lagos, Nigeria out of a dilapidated building that appears to be abandoned in a Google Maps photo.

“Welcome to Synergy Law Partners, the leading commercial law firm committed to meeting the legal needs of its Client in a manner that combines fine thinking and resourcefulness with the business priorities of our clients in mind,” the company’s website proclaims.

It is not clear why a Nigerian company would buy an abandoned gas station in Olney, if in fact, Synergy Law Partners is the buyer. The sale was transacted on behalf of Young County by the Perdue Brandon Fielder Collins and Mott law firm, said Mrs. Pagsuberon who described the situation as “concerning.”

The law firm spoke with the buyer’s agent in Houston at least once to confirm that the buyer understood that the terms of the sale included cleaning up the tires and tanks, she said. Perdue Brandon had no immediate comment.

Chief Birbeck said the City is still trying to determine “the purchaser’s reasoning for buying the property” but police will go ahead with code enforcement. “The focus of Code Enforcement is to find the responsible party and gain compliance regarding the current code violations,” he said. “The new owners were given reasonable time to develop and execute a plan to mitigate the concerns. We are now working on it as an enforcement and potential abatement project if the owners do not communicate with the city and bring the property into compliance.”