A discovery petition that Alabama One used to challenge two Alabama Credit Union Administration examiners in 2011 could be a forgery, according to Danny Ray Butler's fiancée, Paige Howard.

Judge John England of the Alabama Circuit Court of Tuscaloosa continued a hearing on the current fight between Alabama One and the ACUA over the ACUA's April 2 cease and desist order at 1 p.m. CDT Monday.

Butler pleaded guilty in federal court to six counts of a 51-count indictment for check kiting between Alabama One and the West Alabama Bank and Trust in February 2014, and has been in the federal prison system since September 2014. However, Howard has said prison officials have told Butler to expect release from the federal prison in Talladega, Ala. in December 2015.

Howard, who has power of attorney for Butler, sent the document to noted forensic handwriting firm Drexler Document Laboratory in Birmingham, Ala. for analysis. Howard said Drexler told her she can expect an analysis later this week.

“After all this time, I have come to know Danny's signature,” Howard said. “That's not Danny's signature.”

The document appeared to be a petition from Danny Ray Butler to allow his lawyers to depose Jordan Sullivan, then president of the then $48.7 million Secure First Credit Union in Birmingham, Lindsey Sumrall, another Secure first employee, and Robert Kuhn, currently the president/CEO of Capstone Bank, in connection to a threatened 2011 lawsuit against ACUA examiners James Arndt and Robert Russell.

Reached by phone at the ACUA, Arndt, now listed as a Bank Examination Coordinator on the agency's website, declined to comment on the story and referred CU Times to the agency's administrative offices.

Tuscaloosa attorney James D. Turner, who has also been a long-time attorney for Alabama One, prepared the Aug. 23, 2011 petition and other motions. Turner did not respond to an email seeking comment on the document.

According to the petition and related documents, Butler sought to depose the executives as part of a pre-complaint investigation into whether or not the two ACUA examiners, Arndt and Russell, had revealed confidential information about his business dealings and outstanding loans to them. The petition said Butler expected to file a complaint against the agency for defamation as well as, eventually, potential invasion of privacy and civil conspiracy.

According to documents filed in the dispute, in 2009 both the ACUA and NCUA ordered Alabama One to cease making business loans, divest itself of loans to Butler and execute replacement loans with specific terms and a schedule of payments with a date of termination. As a result, the ACUA began looking at Butler and his businesses very closely, according to the documents.

“Mr. Butler's financial situation is a matter of great interest to state regulators and one that will continue to be of interest in the foreseeable future,” the ACUA wrote in a motion objecting to Butler's petition on Aug. 31, 2011. “The ACUA and NCUA continue to closely monitor lending to Mr. Butler or his corporations and others through whom he may be doing business.”

The agency's filing also revealed that Butler had 16 loans from at least two state-chartered credit unions and that when the ACUA and NCUA ordered the credit union `stop making loans to Butler in 2009, they amounted to $26 million or 48% of Alabama One's business loan portfolio. The document also revealed that most of them were interest-only loans with no specific payment period.

The same firm that filed the petition, Turner and Turner, also filed a motion to strike the agency's motion on Sep. 9, 2011 and the examiners countered that the information provided in their motion was in file with the ACUA and available to the public on Sep. 27.

The court dismissed the case later, according to one of the lawyers in the matter who declined to speak for the record.

Howard said Alabama One lawyers told Butler they planned to sue the ACUA and make the suit about Butler rather than about the credit union. She said Butler  told her that when she visited him in the Talladega prison facility. She also said lawyers told Butler that Turner would write the ACUA to tell them how upset the investigation had made Butler, but that no one informed him about Turner's legal motion.

Mr. Sumrall, a branch manager for Alabama One from 2000-2005, did not reply to an email seeking clarification of his position with Secure First in 2011.