A section entitled “withdrawls from a partnership or distributions by a corporations” shows CEO Randall Lane was given in $151,172.80 and James Dunning, the chairman and a 73 percent owner of the venture, was given $103,146.58 — which was described as “interest on loan.”

Lane said that his disbursement was his salary and expenses for the year. “I’d taken a 50 percent pay cut and personally put in about $50,000 of my own money to make payroll at the end,” said Lane.

“I put my entire life savings into the company,” he said. He estimated that as much as $400,000 to $500,000 is now basically worthless.

But Doubledown creditors will be more interested in the withdrawal made from the ailing Doubledown operation by Dunning, a mulit-millionaire publishing entrepreneur married to Martha Stewart’s longtime publicist Susan Magrino.

At one point in his career, he had tried to put together a coalition to buy the New York Mets but lost out to Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday. He did bought the old Petersen Publishing empire from its founder and flipped to British publisher Emap for $1.4 billion in the mid-1990s.

At Doubledown, Dunning replaced Magnus Greaves as the principal investor. Dunning eventually pumped in around $7 million.

Most vexing to former employees was the final $300,000 “loan” made in 2008 as debts were piling up and the landlord was getting ready to evict the company for non-payment of rent. Dunning’s loan was to convert into equity of the company defaulted on it.

Some question whether the withdrawal was legal. The filings seem to indicate that he was paid $103,146.58 and was still owed $197,195.84. One Dunning supporter claimed that he had helped keep the company afloat and the $103,146 was interest owed from past loans and that he stopped getting the interest payments once he made the last ditch $300,000 loan.

At another point, Dunning is listed as an unsecured creditor owed $197,195.

“I don’t understand why Jim Dunning of all people would get $100,000,” said one former investor, who has received no pay outs. “Employees did not get their last two weeks pay, people didn’t get their expenses and everyone had already had their pay cut in half.”

The court records show Dunning received his payments from February 2008 to November 4, 2008. Doubledown filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in February 2009, which means the business is closes and liquidated.

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