The bankruptcy court correctly held that the bankrupt debtor had fraudulently transferred property with the actual intent to defraud his creditors. It did not matter that the transfer of property was from one of his wholly owned corporations to another controlled entity rather than from the debtor himself. By the transfer, the debtor moved assets out of the creditor’s reach which the creditor could have executed on by obtaining a judgment levy on the debtor’s stock in the wholly owned corporation. Therefore, the bankruptcy court should have held that the debt owed the bank was nondischargable to the full value of the fraudulently transferred assets rather than the lesser amount of assets transferred from the principal debtor corporation to a second corporation which then made the fraudulent transfer.
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Paez, J.); August 24, 2017; 2017 WL 3623262