The Non-Financial Ledger

Think about what it takes to build a small fleet. You find a platform that promises a passive income stream. You trust their pitch. You sign a management agreement, hand over the physical titles to your vehicles, and let the company handle the insurance, the repairs, the renters, and the day-to-day chaos of running a truck rental business. You are a small business owner betting on a system you were told to trust.

Urban Interests LLC did exactly that. Starting in 2020, this small Colorado business bought into Fluid Truck’s investor program and built a fleet of 47 vehicles. They handed over the original titles. They let Fluid Truck collect all payments on their behalf. They let Fluid Truck manage all maintenance. They put their property in someone else’s hands because that was the deal.

For a while, it worked. Fluid Truck sold 29 of their vehicles correctly, deducted the agreed fees, and paid out the remaining proceeds. That history of compliance is what made the betrayal so precise. Fluid Truck knew how to follow through on the promise. They chose to stop.

Between February and June 2024, Fluid Truck sold 14 more vehicles belonging to Urban Interests. Fourteen vehicles, sold at auction, with the money landing in Fluid Truck’s accounts. And then: nothing. Requests went unanswered. Months of delays piled up. The company kept offering explanations that never resolved into payment. The lawsuit describes this pattern as “deception and obfuscation,” and that is exactly what it was. You do not spend months confused about whether you owe someone $415,000. You know. Fluid Truck knew.

The deeper wound is in what the complaint describes happening behind closed doors. While Urban Interests and the other investors were waiting and asking and following up, a partner at Bison Capital, a Fluid Truck investor, was allegedly on the phone explaining the real plan. They were going to put Fluid Truck into bankruptcy. They were going to route $20 million into a competitor called Kingbee Rentals. And then Kingbee would buy Fluid Truck’s assets out of bankruptcy, leaving the vehicle owners with nothing and the insiders with a fresh start. The investors and the board, according to the complaint, knew the money was stolen. They were building the exit before the victims had even been told no.

There are more than 100 people and businesses in this class. Each of them bought into a platform, trusted the structure, and got their titles taken. Most of them are not corporations with legal departments. They are people who saved enough to buy a fleet of trucks because someone told them it was a smart, managed investment. The theft was not abstract. It was their property, sold at auction, with the cash diverted to keep a failing company running a little longer.

“Fluid Truck is stealing from its vehicle owners to fund its ongoing operations, and effectively concedes as much.”

Legal Receipts: What They Said Out Loud

The complaint is built on direct admissions. These are the quotes from the source document that do the most damage.

“In my initial communication, I promised transparency and open communication, so I want to be candid—we are facing significant financial challenges that we have yet to solve for. As a result, we are still unable to process arrears payments, including insurance claim payouts and monies owed for vehicle sales. … Most importantly, we expect that moving forward, insurance claims payouts and monies owed for vehicle sales will be paid in a timely manner.” Thomas Scott Avila, Interim CEO of Fluid Market Inc. and Fluid Fleet Services LLC, in an email to FVIP program participants dated August 21, 2024

• Avila explicitly acknowledged that the company owed money for vehicle sales and insurance claims. The word “arrears” is accounting language for money that was due and not paid on time, a formal admission that the debt existed and was already overdue.
• His promise that payments “will be paid in a timely manner” going forward implies he understood this was not what had been happening. He was describing the past behavior as a failure while continuing it.
• This email was sent on August 21, 2024. The lawsuit was filed on October 10, 2024. In that six-week gap, no payments were made, despite the “transparency and open communication” pledge in the same email.

“Douglas Trussler, a partner with Bison Capital Asset Management, LLC (‘Bison Capital’), which is an investor in Fluid Truck, informed Urban Interests by telephone on October 2, 2024, and by email on October 3, 2024, that Fluid Truck fully intends and is resolved to keep the sales proceeds stolen from Urban Interests and other FVIP owners.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 32, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-2811, U.S. District Court, District of Colorado

• This is not a company employee speculating. A partner at a named investment firm told the plaintiff directly, by phone and in writing, that Fluid Truck had decided to keep the money. This communication occurred eight days before the lawsuit was filed.
• The detail that Trussler confirmed this both verbally and in a follow-up email matters. It eliminates any argument that there was a misunderstanding. The intent to keep the funds was stated as settled company policy to the people being stolen from.

“According to Mr. Trussler, Fluid Truck, Bison Capital, and other board members and investors know that Fluid Truck has stolen more than $11 million from FVIP owners.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 33, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-2811, U.S. District Court, District of Colorado

• The complaint attributes the $11 million figure directly to a Bison Capital partner speaking on behalf of Fluid Truck’s board and investor group, not to the plaintiff’s own calculations. This makes the dollar amount an admission from inside the company’s ownership structure.
• The allegation that the board collectively “knows” about the theft establishes awareness at the governance level, which is legally significant for claims of directed and sanctioned misconduct against individual board members.

“Their plan is to place Fluid Truck into bankruptcy, invest a portion of $20 million into Kingbee Rentals, and then have Kingbee Rentals buy Fluid Truck’s assets out of bankruptcy.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 34, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-2811, U.S. District Court, District of Colorado, summarizing statements attributed to Douglas Trussler of Bison Capital

• This is a description of a structured maneuver designed to make the company’s assets unreachable to creditors (the vehicle owners) while preserving them for the insiders through a freshly capitalized successor entity.
• Trussler communicated this plan to the plaintiffs before the lawsuit was filed, meaning the company’s own investors told the victims exactly how they planned to prevent repayment. The complaint frames this as an attempt to “game the system.”

“By emails dated September 27, 2024, Brennen DuPree, Fluid Truck’s head of FVIP relations and remarketing, admitted that Fluid Truck owes $178,216 to Urban Interests for net sales and claims proceeds in connection with the decommissioning of Urban Interests’ Vehicles.” Class Action Complaint, Paragraph 26, Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-2811, U.S. District Court, District of Colorado

• Fluid Truck’s own head of FVIP relations confirmed the debt in writing. This is an internal acknowledgment from the division directly responsible for managing the investor relationship, not an outside estimate.
• The $178,216 figure represents the net owed after deductions. The gross proceeds owed to Urban Interests alone totaled $415,325 across 14 vehicles. The gap between those two numbers reflects the decommissioning fees and related deductions Fluid Truck was contractually permitted to take; the $178,216 is what remained after that math, and still was not paid.

“Fluid Truck has finally admitted to Urban Interests and other members of the class that it is intentionally keeping more than $11 million in stolen funds owed to Plaintiff and the class as sales and claims proceeds.”

How the Scheme Worked: What You Were Told vs. Reality

Fluid Truck’s Fluid Vehicle Investor Platform (FVIP) was built on a specific set of promises. The complaint documents the precise gap between those promises and what the company actually did.

• The FVIP program was presented as a fully managed investment product. Fluid Truck handled insurance, payments, maintenance, and day-to-day operations, meaning investors had no direct visibility into whether the sales process was being executed honestly.
• When Fluid Truck decommissioned vehicles, it used a third-party auction service to sell them. The complaint alleges that proceeds from those auctions were deposited and retained by Fluid Truck rather than forwarded to the owners who held legal title to those vehicles.
• Urban Interests held title and had the right to possess their vehicles at all times. They provided the original, physical copies of their vehicle titles to Fluid Truck, which gave Fluid Truck the operational ability to transact on their behalf without the protective oversight of a neutral intermediary.
• The complaint alleges that Fluid Truck’s decommissioning policy was a material misrepresentation from the beginning. The claim is that the company knew it would not honor the policy when it invited investors to rely on it, satisfying the legal requirement for intentional fraud.

The Cast: Who Designed This, Who Continued It, and Who Funded It

The complaint names five defendants and draws clear lines between who started the scheme, who inherited it, and who financed it.

• James Eberhard served as CEO of Fluid Market Inc. and Fluid Fleet Services LLC. The complaint describes him and Jenifer Snyder as the “masterminds” behind the scheme, alleging they directed, actively participated in, and cooperated in the theft of vehicle owners’ proceeds.
• Jenifer Snyder is Eberhard’s sister and served as Fluid Truck’s general counsel. She is also the registered agent for both Fluid Market Inc. and Fluid Fleet Services LLC, meaning the legal notice address for these corporations is her personal address in Broomfield, Colorado.
• Both Eberhard and Snyder resigned as executives in July 2024, but the complaint notes they remained on the board of directors. Their board seats gave them continued governance authority over the company even as the theft they allegedly designed continued under new management.
• Thomas Scott Avila was installed as interim CEO on July 16, 2024, by the board of directors, which included Eberhard and Snyder. The complaint alleges that Avila approved, sanctioned, and cooperated in the continuation of the theft scheme rather than reversing it.
• Bison Capital Asset Management, through partner Douglas Trussler, communicated directly to Urban Interests that the company intended to keep the stolen proceeds. The complaint names other unnamed board members and investors as also having directed, approved, or sanctioned the scheme.

Urban Interests’ Vehicles: A Documented Record of Theft

The complaint contains an itemized table of every vehicle sold by Fluid Truck on behalf of Urban Interests between February and June 2024, with sale dates and dollar amounts. This is not an estimate; these are recorded auction transactions.

• The single largest vehicle in the batch, F1085, sold for $64,000 on March 25, 2024. That one transaction alone represents a significant sum for a small business investor, and Fluid Truck kept it in full.
• Across all 14 vehicles, gross proceeds total $415,325. After deductions for decommissioning fees and repairs, Fluid Truck’s own employee admitted in writing that the net amount owed to Urban Interests was $178,216, a debt that remained unpaid at the time of the lawsuit.
• Urban Interests made repeated requests for payment over months before filing. The complaint describes a pattern of “deception and obfuscation about the status of payment,” meaning the company was not simply slow; it was actively managing the optics of the non-payment while keeping the funds.
• Urban Interests is a single plaintiff in a class of more than 100 FVIP owners. The complaint alleges Fluid Truck has stolen and retained more than $11 million in total from the full class, making the Urban Interests situation one documented instance of a much wider pattern.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

Financial fraud carried out against small business owners and individual investors produces documented harm to physical and mental health at both the individual and community level.

• The victims in this case are small business owners and individual investors who placed their personal capital into a structured investment product. The loss of tens of thousands of dollars per affected person, and over $11 million in aggregate, represents real financial stress with documented links to anxiety, depression, and physical health deterioration.
• The complaint describes months of deliberate deception during which investors were told payment was coming while the company had already decided not to pay. Sustained deception of this kind, where people are made to wait and hope for money they are owed, prolongs the psychological harm of the underlying theft rather than resolving it.
• The class action mechanism exists because individual damages, while devastating at the personal level, may be “relatively small” compared to the cost of individual litigation. This means many of the 100+ affected investors would have had no practical legal recourse without a coordinated class action, leaving them isolated with the harm and no path to recovery.

Economic Inequality

The structure of the FVIP program specifically targeted small investors and individual business owners, concentrating the harm among people with less economic power than the institutional investors and board members who allegedly knew about and planned to preserve the stolen funds.

• Fluid Truck’s platform was designed for “individuals and small business owners” to purchase vehicle fleets as investments. The class is composed of exactly this demographic, while the insiders with knowledge of the $11 million theft included institutional investors like Bison Capital Asset Management and the corporate board.
• The planned bankruptcy and Kingbee Rentals asset transfer would have preserved Fluid Truck’s operating assets for institutional insiders while eliminating the legal mechanism through which small investors could recover their money. Bankruptcy proceedings allow asset purchasers to take on assets without inheriting prior debts, meaning the company’s value would continue for those with capital to reinvest while the vehicle owners were left as unsecured creditors in a shell.
• Under Colorado’s civil theft statute, C.R.S. § 18-4-405, the plaintiffs are entitled to three times their actual damages plus attorney’s fees. The treble damages provision exists specifically because theft from individuals is treated as a more serious harm than simple breach of contract, requiring a financial penalty sufficient to deter repetition.
• The FVIP structure gave Fluid Truck possession of the original vehicle titles, placing vehicle owners in a position where they could not easily recover or resell their property without the company’s cooperation. This dependency was structural and deliberate, and it is what allowed the theft to persist for months without resolution.
• The class has more than 100 members, and the complaint states that joining all of them individually would be “impracticable.” Each member is dealing with what the complaint acknowledges may be a “relatively small” individual loss in litigation terms, meaning the burden of the theft falls heaviest on exactly the people least equipped to fight it in court alone.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now? Who to Pressure and How to Fight Back

This case is active in federal court. Here is who is accountable, who is watching, and what you can do.

The Named Defendants

• James Eberhard, former CEO and current board member, Fluid Market Inc. and Fluid Fleet Services LLC. Address on record: 1601 South Elizabeth Street, Denver, Colorado 80210.
• Jenifer Snyder, former General Counsel and current board member, Fluid Market Inc. and Fluid Fleet Services LLC. Registered agent for both companies. Address on record: 13880 Gunnison Way, Broomfield, Colorado 80020.
• Thomas Scott Avila, Interim CEO of Fluid Market Inc. and Fluid Fleet Services LLC. Address on record: 762 Lakeshore Boulevard, Incline Village, Nevada 89451.
• Fluid Market Inc., 400 W. 48th Avenue, Suite 300, Denver, Colorado 80216.
• Fluid Fleet Services LLC, 400 W. 48th Avenue, Suite 300, Denver, Colorado 80216.

Regulatory Watchlist

• Colorado Attorney General’s Office: Colorado has jurisdiction over the corporate entities and the individual defendants. The AG’s office handles consumer protection and civil theft complaints involving Colorado-registered companies. File at coag.gov.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): The FTC investigates unfair or deceptive business practices at the federal level. The FVIP program operated nationally and the class has members nationwide. File at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): When companies collect payments and manage financial proceeds on behalf of consumers or small business investors, CFPB jurisdiction may apply. File at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.
• U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Colorado: If the planned Fluid Truck bankruptcy is filed, creditors (the FVIP owners) have the right to file proofs of claim and object to any asset sale that strips them of recovery. Monitor PACER (pacer.gov) for case filings.
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): The FVIP program may qualify as a securities product given its structure as a managed investment vehicle. If so, Fluid Truck’s conduct could constitute securities fraud. File a tip at sec.gov/tcr.

Mutual Aid, Organizing, and Resistance

• If you are an FVIP investor who has not been paid, contact the attorneys on this case: David C. Holman and John K. Crisham at Crisham & Holman LLC, 2549 West Main Street, Suite 202, Littleton, Colorado 80120. Phone: (720) 739-2176. Emails: Dave@crishamholman.com and John@crishamholman.com. The class is actively seeking all similarly situated FVIP owners.
• Connect with other gig economy and platform economy investor networks to share information about this case. Platform-based investment schemes that retain physical asset titles and manage all financial flows on behalf of investors are a structural risk pattern. Sharing documentation of this case helps other investors identify similar red flags before they sign over their vehicle titles.
• Monitor classaction.org for updates on case status, settlement negotiations, and class certification rulings. The case is indexed at that site as Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-2811.
• If the bankruptcy filing happens, attend the creditors’ meeting (341 meeting) if you are an affected FVIP owner. This is a legally mandated public meeting where creditors can directly question the debtor’s officers under oath. The date and location will be posted on PACER once a filing is made.
• Support local small business advocacy organizations in Colorado and nationwide that push for stronger platform-economy regulations, escrow requirements for managed-investment products, and mandatory bonding for companies that hold third-party asset titles.