Minonk Native Honored as a Minnesota Lawyer of Year

Friday, February 25, 2011 - Posted 11:50:07 AM

---

Minonk native Daryle Uphoff was honored as a Minnesota Lawyer Attorney of the Year at an award ceremony at Minneapolis Thursday night.  Uphoff, a 1960 MDR graduate, was recognized for all he accomplished in 2010 and during his 16 years as managing partner of Lindquist & Vennum in Minneapolis.  Below is a writeup presented at the awards ceremony.

---

"Very challenging, very complex, and very interesting."

Those are the words Daryle Uphoff used to describe the cases related to one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history. Since October 2008, Uphoff, a partner at Lindquist & Vennum in Minneapolis, has been involved in legal work related to Tom Petters' $3.65 billion scheme.

Although his hands were full managing Lindquist, Uphoff agreed to advise Doug Kelley who was serving as a receiver and eventually Chapter 11 trustee in cases related to Petters Group Worldwide and Petters Inc. At the time that Petters's activities were uncovered, it was the largest Ponzi scheme on record. That was until three months later when Bernard Madoff's activities were revealed.

Shortly after the Petters scheme was uncovered, the majority of the businesses went into bankruptcy. The only exception was the Polaroid Corp., which was a debtor in possession.

"There were several significant challenges," Uphoff said. "The first was simply trying to get your arms around it. There were more than 100 different entities encompassed by the receivership and the bankruptcies."

"The next challenge was that the entire operation, but for Sun Country and Polaroid, was a Ponzi scheme," he said. "It was difficult to sort out the books and records. ... "It was an enormous challenge to figure out where all this money came from and where it went."

Another challenge was to try and maintain value in the companies that had value — Polaroid and Sun Country.

This year, Uphoff moved out of his role as managing partner of his firm and he has been able to take on more work related to his commercial/corporate bankruptcy practice. Since 2008, about half of his time was spent managing the firm and the other half was spent on the Petters cases.

As managing partner last year, he also faced the challenge of managing the business and communications crisis that arose when one of his partners, Michael Margulies, was charged with stealing up to $2.5 million from the firm and his clients. Uphoff described it as an unfortunate situation and something the firm looks forward to putting behind it.

"That's not something I really feel good about other than I think we addressed it in a professional and appropriate way," he said. "I think most other law firms would have done the same."

—Tony Anderson