Gary St. Fleur ran for Scranton mayor twice and preached fiscal responsibility.
He and other city taxpayers successfully sued Scranton for collecting more taxes than allowed.
As a defendant, he defaulted on a $5,000 election-related loan, a court found, and the man he owes says Gary St. Fleur isn’t his real name.
His real name is Gary Edwick Fleur, a civil complaint filed by Scranton landlord Vsevolod “Steve” Garanin’s real-estate holding company says.
The complaint, filed by Garanin’s GCAP Holdings LLC , says the mayoral candidate owes him $5,000 since 2017.
In March 2018, a magisterial district judge ruled Garanin is owed the money plus $182.25 in court costs. Garanin said his private detective determined the real name after an investigation.
In an interview, Garanin said he’s about to go after St. Fleur’s property to collect on the debt.
“It’s the height of hypocrisy to have an outstanding judgment and to refuse to pay them and then preach to the people that the city should be more fiscally responsible,” Garanin said.
Efforts to reach the former mayoral candidate were unsuccessful.
Garanin said he loaned St. Fleur the money for his brief 2017 mayoral campaign, believing that was his name. He liked that St. Fleur joined a March 2017 lawsuit that challenged the city’s tax structure.
“Frankly, I agree with a lot of his positions on financial responsibility and I was a supporter of his,” Garanin said.
In the suit, St. Fleur and seven other city taxpayers claimed the city annually exceeded caps on income and other taxes. The suit succeeded in December when a judge ruled the city exceeded the caps for five years, meaning the city owes taxpayers $50 million in cash or credit against future taxes. The city plans to appeal.
St. Fleur’s 2017 mayoral campaign, which he tried to mount as the Libertarian Party candidate, failed before it really started. Republican voters challenged the validity of St. Fleur’s nomination papers Aug. 8, 2017. A judge ruled in their favor about three weeks later and ordered St. Fleur removed from the ballot. Courtright, a Democrat, won reelection that fall, defeating Republican lawyer Jim Mulligan.
Garanin said he advanced St. Fleur the $5,000 to shoot a campaign video or commercial for the campaign, but St. Fleur never paid him back.
On Oct. 22, 2017, St. Fleur agreed to repay him within two weeks, according to a Nov. 17, 2017 email to St. Fleur that Garanin provided.
“We are now 4 weeks after and still no payment,” Garanin wrote in the email.
Tired of waiting, Garanin filed a civil complaint Dec. 4, 2017, with Magisterial District Judge Alyce Hailstone Farrell.
On Dec. 17, St. Fleur responded with an emailed apology.
“Sorry for being out of touch,” he wrote. “I have been dealing with a tremendous amount of difficulty since the election, both professional and personal. I appreciate your patience.”
He blamed the election, despite not being on the ballot.
“I am having some difficulty getting the funds to pay you back since I was left with debts since the last election,” St. Fleur wrote.
Instead of repayment, St. Fleur offered Garanin “an opportunity that needs to be finalized asap.”
“I have someone in NYC who wants to build a rehab clinic in Scranton,” St. Fleur wrote. “He already owns and operates one in NYC. He is looking for sizeable office space. His requirements may result in the need to purchase an entire building. If you have any such property available in Scranton, please inform me immediately. He is looking to close now.”
Garanin kept pursuing payment.
On Jan. 18, St. Fleur responded.
“I should be able to pay you in full by March 1. Regardless, I will be making payments by then,” he wrote Garanin.
Garanin said he hasn’t received anything, and will soon look to execute a writ that allows him to sell St. Fleur’s property to collect the money.
St. Fleur sought the mayor’s office again in the Nov. 5 special election, called because Courtright resigned and pleaded guilty in July to bribery and other federal corruption charges.
St. Fleur wrote on his Facebook page he will see to the residents get the relief they deserve.
With 384 votes, he finished a distant sixth among eight candidates as voters elected Paige Gebhardt Cognetti the city’s first female mayor.
The name St. Fleur did not show up when The Times-Tribune did a background check in court dockets before the election. Garanin brought his suit against Gary Fleur to the newspaper’s attention.
In his runs for mayor, the candidate has always used the name Gary St. Fleur.
Voter registration records show that name, as do his nomination papers for both mayoral elections. Both list an apartment at 1649 Wyoming Ave. as his address.
A deputy sheriff tried to execute a writ to collect Garanin’s debt in August 2018 was told by a person at the Wyoming Avenue address there that “no person with that name lives” there, according to court papers.
Contact the writer:
bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com;
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