Remember that New Yorker story from Grimm's "Mikey Suits" days: Grimm and his married Caribbean squeeze at a Queens nightclub; the belligerent estranged husband; the bouncer; Round 2, where Suits puts some guys' lights out; Round 3, where Suits arrests everybody in the club, etc.?
Grimm did a masterful job, when that story broke, of brushing off the scandal and portraying himself as simply doing what any righteous dude would have done under the circumstances.
So when the Daily News broke the story this week that Carlos Luquis, who carried business cards identifying him as a director of Texas-based company Austin Refuel, of which Grimm owns about a third, is a convicted felon, I was ready for the back-spin.
Grimm and Luquis have a history: they worked together for many years as FBI agents.
Luquis left the agency in 2003 to head security for the Texas Electric Reliability Council. Eighteen months later, he was indicted in a fraudulent scheme in which the council was billed $2 million by companies that didn't exist, for work that was never done.
In 2006, Luquis was convicted in 2 of 6 counts, and served 2 years of a 12-year sentence. He was released in 2008, just before Austin Refuel was incorporated, still owing $200,000 in restitution.
Austin Refuel Texas customers identified Luquis as their company contact. People in the alternative energy business who dealt with Austin Refuel say that Grimm and Luquis were in the business together.
But Grimm denied Luquis was his business partner, calling him an "independent contractor" hired by a mutual friend.
Again, as with the Queens nightclub story, Grimm cast himself as the hero, the guy who rose to the occasion: this time, as the loyal friend who gave Carlos a much-deserved second chance.
The Daily News article.
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