A Look at the Emergency Receivership Appointment for ColorArt, Las Vegas Color Graphics

Editor’s Note: What is reported in this article was taken from publicly available records — such as court documents and business entity formation documents — and previously published information. To further understand some of the allegations and claims, we spoke with several current and former employees under the promise of anonymity.

JAL Equity — a private equity firm located in Sarasota, Florida, led by its founder, managing partner, and sole owner Eran Salu — has acquired approximately 46 printing facilities since its inception in 2008, including two LLCs: Marketing.com and ColorArt. Over the past few years, JAL Equity’s management of these printing companies has spawned scores of lawsuits, millions in losses for lenders, and countless layoffs. This is just one of those stories.

Following a voluntary bankruptcy filing by Eureka, Missouri-based ColorArt and its subsidiary Las Vegas Color Graphics, one of ColorArt’s lenders filed a lawsuit against JAL Equity and Eran Salu.

The plaintiff, Aequum Capital Financial, filed the lawsuit in the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, Missouri, on Oct. 7, 2025. In the documents, Aequum, a commercial lender, called for the court to “immediately [appoint] a receiver to take control of and collect all of the business assets” of ColorArt and Las Vegas Color Graphics (LVCG).

Aequum called the receivership on the grounds that it is the senior secured lender to ColorArt and LVCG, and alleges in the court document that it is owed more than $26 million on a defaulted loan.

In the filing, Aequum alleges ColorArt and LVCG — aka the Borrowers — “have engaged in a scheme to vastly overstate the value of the collateral for this asset-based loan, locked Aequum out of any ability to independently verify the value and extent of its collateral, and have admitted that Borrowers, under defendant Eran Salu’s direction, have begun diverting funds to other businesses [owned] by Salu to avoid paying back Aequum’s loan.”

After reviewing the facts presented by Aequum and the defendants on Oct. 20 in an evidentiary hearing, “ ... the Court finds that the legal prerequisites for the appointment of a receiver have been met; and that the equity will be served by the appointment of a receiver,” according to the Order Appointing Receiver filed Oct. 29. NMBL Strategies was chosen as the appointed receiver, per the court document.

The Details

According to Aequum’s emergency motion for receivership, the lender executed an agreement on June 6, 2024, with ColorArt and LVCG to provide a “revolving credit facility … with a principal amount of up to $30 million.” The filing outlines nearly all of ColorArt and LVCG’s assets — such as equipment, chattel paper, investment property, and bank accounts, among other things — as collateral for the credit facility.

One of the factors used to calculate borrowing capacity was the “value of Borrowers’ ‘eligible’ accounts receivable and inventory.” Eligibility was determined, for example, by invoice age; invoices less than 90 days old were eligible, according to Aequum’s filing.

However, Aequum alleges that during a routine field exam conducted by its field examiner in April 2025, “significant discrepancies [were found] in the accounts receivable and inventory reported on the Borrowers’ Borrowing Base Certificates.” According to the court documents, this includes:

“... duplicate invoice numbers across different customers (virtually impossible without manipulation), account balances that did not reconcile, excessive accounts receivable from affiliates, and significant past due tax liabilities.”

Aequum alleges that, based on what field examiners could confirm during that routine examination, ColorArt and LVCG “had overstated their accounts receivable by approximately $2 million and were in default.”

Click to enlarge. | Credit: Emergency Motion for Appointment of Receivership filed by Aequum Capital

The examination also revealed, according to the filing, that the borrowers had more than $2.2 million in “unaddressed, past due sales tax liabilities,” and that their financial statements hadn’t been audited since 2024.

Because of additional questions surrounding ColorArt and LVCG’s financial information, Aequum alleges it ordered an investigation of the companies’ accounts receivable. This inspection, which involved contacting customers directly, found that “none of the customers verified the amounts reported by Borrowers.” Even Money Mailer — founded in 2023 under the name Money Mailer Franchising, LLC, and registered under Eran Salu’s name — “confirmed that $2.65 million of invoices claimed by Borrower did not exist in their system at all,” according to the court document.

Aequum also attempted to verify accounts receivable by having an inspector receive direct access to the customer's portal — another common verification method — but Aequum alleges that the inspector was never given access to the portal or data that could be used to verify accounts receivable numbers.

On top of this, Aequum alleges other obstructions to the verification process. According to the court filing, on Sept. 23, 2025:

“Borrowers also locked Aequum’s consultant out of the facility and refused to give him access to the books and records of the business to confirm other financial information.”

Additionally, the suit notes that on Aug. 31, 2025, LVCG and ColorArt submitted a borrowing base certificate, a document that outlines the value of its collateral. Aequum alleges that it was delivered a month late and with insufficient supporting documentation, and “included inventory and equipment attributed to four facilities that they closed in Texas and Illinois where there was no longer any collateral of value.”

In September 2025, Aequum took over ColorArt and LVCG’s operating account. However, according to the affidavit of Aequum Executive Director Eugene Ruggles, “ColorArt’s deposits had significantly decreased in a suspicious manner and that was inconsistent with the financial reporting Borrower had provided.”

Specifically, the filing alleges that in the time Aequum had held the account (Sept. 16 to Oct. 3), just under $1.2 million was deposited in the account. This is much lower than the nearly $12 million allegedly reported in the Aug. 31 Borrowing Base Certificate.

According to the filing, Aequum “had come to suspect that Borrowers and Salu were diverting funds from the ‘lockbox’ accounts held by Borrowers to other accounts outside of … Aequum’s control.”

Aequum alleges its representatives confronted Salu at an in-person meeting on Sept. 29, who “admitted to representatives of Aequum that he had directed two Affiliates of the Borrowers, MoneyMailer and GrowMail (both entities that are also ultimately owned by Salu), not to deposit funds due to Aequum into the Wells Fargo Account and to instead pay a different, unauthorized account over which Aequum lacks control,” according to the documents.

The filing also indicated that Salu “has said multiple times that he would do ‘whatever he had to do,’ including presumably stealing funds that had been pledged to and belonged to Aequum.”

Notably, the Sept. 29 meeting took place at ColorArt’s Eureka, Missouri, facility. Aequum alleges its representatives who attended the meeting “were troubled” by the following scene:

“... machines were not running, a skeleton staff of workers not doing very much, and there seemed to be very little inventory present. Trash was piling up in a corner by one of the doors, and it appeared Borrowers were not paying their waste management company.”

Aequum alleges “the firestorm of falsities and red flags in Borrowers’ financial disclosures, especially pertaining to the $17,823,766 in unverified or disproven open invoices, coupled with Borrower’s intentional and admitted diversion of funds, mounting tax liabilities, and signs of instability at their Eureka plant strongly support the appointment of a receiver …”

According to the Oct. 29 court document, NMBL Strategies was appointed receiver for ColorArt and LVCG.

JAL Equity and its affiliates did not respond to requests for comment ahead of publication.