Federal regulators are suing to get Plano’s famed “Frack Master” to repay investors tens of millions of dollars. But it’s a $3,000 bill from a Royse City printer that could put him behind bars.
Christopher Faulkner, founder, president and CEO of Breitling Energy, was arrested Feb. 19 at Los Angeles International Airport. Law enforcement officials there said he was wanted on a Texas warrant but didn’t immediately provide details.
Rockwall County court documents confirm that the arrest was triggered by a local theft of services case. Faulkner was indicted in September but didn’t turn himself in. A warrant was issued less than a week later, according to court documents, but he wasn’t arrested until he was flagged in Los Angeles last month.
Faulkner is now out of the Los Angeles County jail on $15,000 bail. If convicted, he faces up to two years in a state jail. The Rockwall County District Attorney’s office decline to comment on the case.
The federal fraud case — where authorities have accused him of running an $80 million scam — is a civil action and carries no prison time.
Messages left at Breitling Energy, including one on Friday, were not returned. Faulkner’s civil attorney did not return earlier calls for comment. And a person who answered the phone at Action Bail Bonds in Rockwall, which issued Faulkner’s bond, hung up without comment.
Aaron Oshner, owner of Appreciation Wholesalers, said Faulkner’s assistant stopped by the Royse City print shop last spring for a large job. She told them copies were need for an IRS audit of Breitling Energy, Oshner said.
Then, Oshner and his staff knew nothing about the man who promoted himself as the “Frack Master” in newspapers, on cable news, at oil and gas conferences worldwide and even on a weekly radio show. Faulkner often appeared as an expert and champion of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — despite having no previous background in energy.
