Springville, Calif. -- A pair of filings in Tulare County courts detail a trail of bad debts left by disgraced anti-porn crusader Shelley Lubben.
When Shelley's husband, Garrett, divorced her after she cheated on him with a ranch hand named Joe Valley, she received a large number of assets, including full title to a Balch Park Road property (a.k.a. The Lubben Ranch) in her divorce settlement, which was concluded in July 2016.
Readers will recall that Mrs. Lubben's Balch Park home burned to the ground in a drug lab fire in March 2018.
Valley is currently serving a state prison term for the DUI hit-and-run killing of a cyclist a short distance from the Lubben Ranch. A neighbor reported that Lubben was drunk when she drove from her home shortly after the crash, leaving Valley alone on the ranch to greet the California Highway Patrol.
The question of who exactly owns the Balch Park Road property is a murky one, to which we will return at another time. Lubben apparently sold all or most of it to a man named Sirjoe Carmona, but has received insurance money after the fire, which would indicate that she retained an insurable interest.
According to documents on file in Tulare County, Lubben received $100,000 from Carmona in June 2017, plus a $200,000 promissory note, to be paid off at the rate of $1,000 per month.
Shelley also received a large number of assets in her divorce settlement, which was concluded in July 2016.
And in April 2018, Lubben received a $144,000 property and casualty insurance payment for the destruction of her home and personal possessions in the drug lab fire.
Yet somehow Shelley Lubben didn't feel the need to pay her credit debt.
In February 2017, Discover Bank sued Shelley in Porterville for $8984.35 in unpaid charges to her Discover Card.
The bank won via default judgment in November of that year.
The default judgement paperwork:
A second collections lawsuit, filed in Visalia by Midland Funding in March 2018, was also lost by Shelley via a default judgment.
Midland Funding is one of the nation's biggest buyers of unpaid debt, so it's unknown at this point where the debt originated.
This time, the damage was $10,169.70
The Request for Entry of Default (notice the date is one month after Shelley received $144,000 in insurance money):
Shelley also left Chase Bank holding the bag for $2,453.54, and failed to pay Macy's $8,902.37.
That's $30,509.96 in bad debts -- and there were others for which figures are not available
Let's all hear it for this fine Christian woman who wants to tell all of us how to live.
UPDATE: On January 14, 2019, Department Stores National Bank also filed a collections action against Shelley Lubben in Tulare County Superior Court. The amount of debt in that case is not yet known.
