Hinsdale Car Wash 'Piggy Bank' For Owners: Biggest Creditor

HINSDALE, IL – The owners of Fuller's Car Wash in Hinsdale use the business as a "piggy bank" to buy luxury cars and cover escalating personal credit card bills, according to Fuller's biggest creditor.

In a brief last week, lawyers for Hinsdale's Brian and Kristine Richards called for a federal bankruptcy court to appoint an independent trustee to oversee the bankruptcy process for Fuller's. The couple's 14-year-old son, Sean Patrick Richards, died a few days after a Fuller's employee struck him with a car while the boy was walking by on July 17, 2023. The family sued the business.

The Richards family said Fuller's controlling owner, Doug Fuller, has too many conflicting interests to be expected to fulfill his duties to creditors. For instance, Fuller owns the car wash and both of its landlords.

The same owners of Fuller's also own a variety of other businesses together. They treat the businesses as a single enterprise, engaging in many intercompany transfers. Fuller admits that he sometimes has "trouble remembering what asset goes with what entity," according to the Richards family's court filing.

Six Fuller siblings are the car wash's shareholders. After the fatal crash in 2023, the business lent a total of $3.2 million to the shareholders as well as a family non-shareholder who "needed money," according to the Richards family's brief.

The business was treated as a "piggy bank" when the shareholders needed money, with loans undocumented or not required to be repaid, the brief said.

In a deposition, Fuller's controller testified that the loans were made, at least in part, because the owners accumulated personal spending on the company's credit card, the Richards family said.

The $3.2 million in loans were reclassified as shareholder distributions after the owners decided to file for bankruptcy but before they filed for it, the family said.

Shortly before the bankruptcy filing in January, Fuller and his sister, Susan Groenewold, increased their biweekly pay to $8,940, from $5,293. They said that was done because they stopped getting dividends in 2024.

Fuller and Groenewold also each got bonuses of $13,000 in October and $53,000 in December, according to the records.

According to Fuller's bankruptcy paperwork, the business owns 18 cars, many of them luxury models. The information showed that Fuller's owes a total of $452,000 for 14 of the cars.

The Richards family contends in their brief that the cars are for the company insiders' personal use or transferred to affiliated businesses. The records indicate that Fuller's controller uses one of the vehicles solely for personal use because she has no other car.

A couple of weeks ago, a U.S. bankruptcy trustee questioned the ability of Fuller's to manage its finances after filing for bankruptcy. The trustee said the business went that route because of the Richards family's lawsuit.

The firm's transfers, the trustee said, were for the "sole benefit of its insiders at a time when it was subject to a potential claim for millions of dollars by the Richards Family and others."

In the crash, the employee hit Sean Richards and then ended up crashing into Fontano's restaurant, injuring customers.

Patch left a message for comment Thursday with Fuller's attorney, David Welch of the Chicago-based Burke Warren law firm. He has not returned previous messages.