Barton H. Watson

Barton Harry Watson (October 18, 1960 – November 24, 2004) was the founder of CyberNET Engineering. He committed suicide after the company was raided by the FBI for mail fraud, unveiling nearly US$100 million in debt.

Watson was the son of Geraldine Watson (née Johnson) and Gerald Watson, a well respected local merchant. Bart, as he was known as a schoolboy, grew up in Belding, Michigan, a suburb of Grand Rapids. Barton attended Belding High School, graduating as valedictorian in 1978. He enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the fall of 1978. While in Ann Arbor, Watson also volunteered at an ambulance company. He dropped out after only one semester and returned to Belding to help his mother run a local automobile service station.

Following the divorce of his parents and as a result of financial pressures, Watson and his mother Geraldine moved to the Washington, D. C. area in 1981, residing for a short time in an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, and later moving to another apartment in Washington near Glover Archbold Park. Through the use of a fraudulent résumé, Watson obtained employment as a junior account executive at the I Street branch of E. F. Hutton. Watson's boss and mentor was the notorious Perry Bacon, who figured prominently in the E. F. Hutton check kiting scandal of the early 1980s. Watson soon managed accounts worth over a million dollars. However, once it emerged that he had embezzled more than $700,000 in funds from nine clients, E. F. Hutton fired him in January 1985. After meeting his future wife, Krista Kotlarz, in 1991, Watson's relationship with John Straayer deteriorated. It bottomed out in 1992 when Straayer discovered Watson was keeping two sets of books. By his estimate, Watson had embezzled over $300,000 from company accounts for personal use. He sued Watson, and subsequently found out that Watson had hidden his 1987 fraud case. Watson responded with a countersuit, saying that Straayer had been the one embezzling funds. Finally. in 1993, Watson and Straayer agreed to dissolve the partnership in a settlement. However, Watson kept the CyberNET name and relaunched it as a reseller.

In December 2003, an anonymous CyberNET employee alerted the FBI office in Grand Rapids to potential fraud at CyberNET, such as fraudulent loans and forged invoices. The Internal Revenue Service and United States Postal Inspection Service quickly joined the investigation. Krista Watson pleaded guilty on September 4, 2007 to federal charges of conspiracy and tax evasion, and was sentenced to seven years in prison.