In June, turncoat Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia was outed for being on the hook for almost a billion dollars in unpaid loans to Credit Suisse funds and Carter Bank & Trust (CB&T). This all came out after CB&T and Justice sued one another over a few hundred million dollars the bank said Justice and his wife had defaulted on, while Justice claimed that the bank was hamstringing his attempts to refinance the loan with a new institution.

In September, Gov. Justice and CB&T announced that the two would stop suing one another after coming to a deal that allows the Justice family a new way to “restructure” their outstanding loans. The Justices personally guaranteed these loans reportedly made to one of the many Justice family companies, which include their “coal-mining and agricultural interests throughout the South as well as the famed Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.” The governor’s son, Jay Justice, released a statement saying, “We are pleased to move past our disagreements with CB&T, and we look forward to a continued productive relationship with the bank moving forward.”

On top of these soon-to-be “restructured” loans, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Justices are also “on the hook” for what is now being reported as $850 million in loans. According to new reports, Justice is making an offer on settling all of that money—and it includes half of his family’s businesses.

U.K. lender Greensil Capital (founded by Lex Greensil), from whom Justice’s coal supplier business, Bluestone Resources, borrowed the nearly $1 billion, went under a few months ago and finally filed for bankruptcy this past April.

At that time, it came to light that the majority of  Justice’s debt had been sold off to the Credit Suisse Group, about $700 million. Justice still owes Credit Suisse this money. And while Justice and his Bluestone Resources have attempted to feign various levels of ignorance about the risk they accepted, as Bloomberg reports, the deal seems to have been something of a maybe-legal, maybe-illegal confidence game that the Justices were given a lot of information about before signing the dotted lines.

The agreement between Greensill Capital and Bluestone included a list of predicted sales to various entities, some of which weren’t yet—and might never be—customers. According to the lawsuit, Greensill Capital provided Bluestone with a roster of companies that might be interested in its metallurgical coal, used to fuel blast furnaces at steel mills. The list had a presumed amount each customer could theoretically purchase, the credit Bluestone would receive for that supposed buyer, and when the mining company would have to make good on the debt.

From there, things got dubious with Greensil rolling over loan payoffs from Bluestone for a fee of the interest. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit, and every industry around the world got exposed at its pressure points. A house built out of magic cards wasn’t able to withstand the pressure. So when Greensil’s backing did not renew, Greensil began scrambling. He discovered pretty quickly that money they were projecting to come in (and keep coming in at higher profits) wasn’t there from the Justices and other borrowers. Overextended, which is a nice way of saying made a bad bet, Greensil folded in scandal. Credit Suisse now has $700 million the Justices’ owe. The other $150 million seems to “creditors of Greensill’s defunct banking unit in Bremen, Germany.” 

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gov. Justice had “offered a $300 million payment and half the value of his family coal businesses to settle loans from the now-defunct Greensil Capital,” as a part of the ongoing deliberations between the Justices and Credit Suisse. According to the WSJ, that $300 million would be found “by refinancing a chunk of the existing loans with a third-party lender.” Who that third party might be was unknown.

Justice bought the company back for a little money in 2015. Sort of makes you wonder what exactly makes a billionaire a billionaire?

All of this comes when Kentucky regulators ask that Justice, his coal companies, and his son Jay pay out the $3 million-plus they owe for reclamation violations and the interest on those environmental penalties. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, the penalties go back to 2015. The state says the Justices went into a deal with the Bluegrass state to clean up the areas and resolves non-compliance issues when they bought a bankrupt coal company in Eastern Kentucky. After Justice didn’t do this, the state sued him, leading to a deal where:

The deal called for Justice companies to have gross payroll of at least $40 million between July 1, 2019 and Dec. 31, 2021. It allowed them to get back a portion of the $2.9 million if the total payroll was less.

These guys and their liability for payments. Of course. After renegotiating the deal they failed to live up to in 2014, and the new one in 2019, the Justices reportedly offered to give the fine money back but only as a payment for the reclamation they have not yet accomplished. Pretty amazing, right? That’s how you become a billionaire.

In March, because of too much great businessmanning, Forbes reported that Justice was no longer considered a billionaire. Thoughts and prayers and all of that.