Longtime customers of Maritime Fuels are concerned they might be out hundreds or thousands of dollars each, after the company declared bankruptcy last week.

Dawn Richards of Bridge Street After School Academy says her business is owed at least $2000 by the defunct company that convinced her to sign a contract requiring pre-authorized bank withdrawals.

And Richards is not alone. According to documents from appointed insolvency trustees PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), former customers on pre-authorized payment plans are owed $2.5 million by the bankrupt company. The round number is likely an estimate, as PwC says it has yet to do a full reconciliation of Maritime Fuels records. It’s also just a fraction of the total debts of the company, which total nearly $44 million dollars.

Once customers like Richards file the paperwork, they will be considered unsecured creditors. The odds of getting repaid do not look good, says Richards. “I’m not holding my breath,” says the daycare operator. “I’m sure that there are people who are probably owed a lot more than $2,000. And where’s that money going to come from?”

The largest creditor listed in the insolvency documents is Western Petroleum, a Newfoundland company owned by Ivan Cassell, the co-owner of Maritime Fuels. According to PwC’s summary, Cassell’s Maritime Fuels owes his other company, Western Petroleum, a round figure of $20 million. Western Petroleum is listed as an unsecured creditor. The Bank of Nova Scotia is owed over $17.8 million, but that debt is secured, and appears to be related to a long list of vehicle loans and mortgages.

The first order of business for Richards after she heard the bankruptcy news on social media was to put a stop payment on the next scheduled pre-authorized payment to Maritime Fuels. Richards paid her bank $12 to do so. Another Sackville customer, Virgil Hammock, had to go cancel his payment in person after an online glitch. That’s when he found out that while banks allow a stop-payment order on a single pre-authorized transaction (for a fee), they won’t allow them to be cancelled altogether. Companies like Maritime Fuels are also able to increase the size of the monthly payment amounts without getting further authorization from the customer. Richards says her payments went up in the spring of 2023, despite her carrying a balance at the end of 2022.

According to a letter from PwC, Hammock and Richards won’t have to keep paying a bank to cancel their Maritime Fuels monthly payments. The insolvency trustee assured customers that because the payments were manually processed by the company, no further payments would go through.

Hammock thinks he is out about $400 from Maritime Fuels. He originally thought it would be more, but luckily just received a fuel delivery in September, meaning he’s better off than those whose oil levels might be dwindling.

“I’m in better shape than some people,” says Hammock, referring to stories he’s heard of people who were expecting oil deliveries in the coming weeks to help see them through the first part of winter. But the retired professor is on a fixed income, and will feel the pinch. “I can’t afford to walk away from $400,” says Hammock.

PwC says it will be sending statements to all pre-paid customers according to Maritime Fuels’ records in the coming week. Then customers will need to fill out a proof of claim form, and submit it to the trustee. Any creditors that do so before December 5 can attend a first meeting of the creditors online or in Halifax.

It’s not yet publicly known what led to the bankruptcy of Maritime Fuels, but a recent news story from CBC’s Richard Cuthbertson noted that the company had just filed a lawsuit against its former accounting firm, Baker Tilly Nova Scotia. According to Cuthbertson, Maritime Fuels alleges that the accounting firm botched its 2019 and 2020 annual financial statements, showing that the company was profitable, when in fact it was losing money, more than $9 million in 2020.

Baker-Tilly denies the allegations made by Maritime Fuels.

It’s not clear how the outcome of that lawsuit would affect small creditors like Dawn Richards and Virgil Hammock, who are taking an immediate hit, right before winter.

“I certainly don’t have an extra $2,000 just to lose,” says Richards. “Times are tough as it is with the increase in food and labour and everything else. Everything has gone up… And when you get, you know, something like this happen? It really hurt.”

PwC says information on the bankruptcy is available at their website, and anyone in need of further information, or who wants to attend the first creditors meeting, should get in touch at ca_maritimefuels@pwc.com or 902 428 2408.