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by WILL FOLKS
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Earlier this year, FITSNews reported extensively on the fall of South Carolina businessman J. Marshall “Jay” Dye III – once fêted as a pillar of the powerful Upstate business community. The former chief executive of the now-defunct Insurance Applications Group (IAG) – a Greenville-based benefits provider – Dye remains the focus of multiple civil lawsuits amidst the collapse of his company.
Per an order issued this week, one of those lawsuits is about to land him behind bars.
IAG previously billed itself as one of the nation’s “largest providers of healthcare and benefits” to the staffing industry, claiming to have “over 2,500 clients nationwide” and citing numerous industry awards for its performance.
Months ago, though, things unraveled quickly and publicly. IAG closed its headquarters in downtown Greenville on January 17, 2025 with no prior notice to employees. This came after FITSNews heard rumblings in mid-December that all was not well with the firm – including allegations IAG had “missed payroll” that month. Issues with the company reportedly dated back to 2023 when, according to our sources, Dye “stopped paying his sales team commission checks with zero notice.”
On February 20, 2025, we reported IAG employees had been summoned back to the company’s former headquarters for the purpose of “clearing out their offices.”
What happened to the company?
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According to a motion submitted in connection with one of the myriad of lawsuits filed against him, Dye allegedly used IAG as his personal piggy bank – and then bailed on its employees when the money ran out.
“Dye has stripped IAG of assets and abandoned the company,” a motion (.pdf) filed in the S.C. thirteenth judicial circuit on December 5, 2024 noted. “There is a significant risk that, absent immediate takeover by a court-appointed receiver, IAG will be further looted and its corporate records compromised, causing irreparable damage to (plaintiffs) and other IAG employees.”
The motion further claimed “Dye has been absent from IAG’s place of business for weeks without explanation,” and alleged that on November 28, 2024, the company “failed to meet a regularly scheduled payroll, leaving all company employees without income entering the holidays and depriving them of wages already earned.”
As the walls closed in on him, Dye became increasingly difficult to track down. Back in February, S.C. circuit court judge Perry Gravely issued an order for Dye to be served in a lawsuit via a newspaper notice after he could “not be found within this state.”
In recent months, Dye’s situation has deteriorated further…
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RELATED | COURT ORDER PUTS S.C. SENATOR ON THE DEFENSIVE
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In May, Gravely entered a default judgment (.pdf) against Dye and related co-defendants for $909,630.32 – plus pre- and post-judgment interest – to a Tennessee content creator named Alexandra Bradshaw. Dye and Bradshaw entered into a confidential agreement in June 2020 related to unspecified allegations against the businessman. Per the terms of the agreement, Dye promised to pay Bradshaw $7,000 per month for a period of fifteen years – for a total of $1.26 million. In return, the allegations against Dye remained confidential.
Dye made fifty-three of these payments – totaling $371,000 – but stopped making the agreed-upon installments in January of this year.
Last month, another default judgment (.pdf) was entered against Dye and related co-defendants in connection with a lawsuit filed against them. That lawsuit awarded Delaware-based Itria Ventures LLC a total of $1.8 million to be collected in equal parts from Dye, his former company, a limited liability firm he owned and a family trust.
Earlier this week, things jumped to a higher energy level when Greenville County master-in-equity Charles B. Simmons Jr. instructed the county clerk of court’s office to “issue a bench warrant” for Dye’s arrest. According to Simmons order (.pdf), Dye was found in contempt of court for failing to appear at a July 2, 2025 hearing in connection with a judgment entered against him in yet another civil case.
As a result, Dye is to be arrested “forthwith” and held at the Greenville County detention center – at which point he would be “brought at the first reasonably available opportunity before this court.”
The lawsuit which prompted the arrest order was brought by former IAG salesman Wilmer Fann Jr. – who accused Dye, IAG and its former vice president of finance, Marisa Mazur, of failing to pay him tens of thousands of dollars in sales commissions. In January of this year, Dye and his company confessed judgment in the case to Fann in the amount of $142,500.
Needless to say, FITSNews will keep our audience apprised as to any new developments related to Dye’s downward spiral… which appears to be approaching terminal velocity.
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THE WARRANT…
(S.C. Thirteenth Judicial Circuit)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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18 comments
I’ll be shocked if he can be found at this point. But I’m not convinced that he has a pile of money stashed anywhere either, so maybe he has nowhere to left to go. How he has avoided criminal fraud charges is also a mystery. That could be next.
They served him with the hearing notice at his house in Cliffs of Glassy. Won’t be that hard to go get him from there.
J Doe – Yeah, but that was weeks ago when he was served that notice. Plenty of time to get off Little Bottom Rd, or we’ll see the perp walk if you are right. At this point with all the default judgements, and orders to seize his property, it is hard to keep up. It all sounds like a low rent version of Epstein or P-Diddy to me.
SO- has Ms. Mazur been spotted around town? Just curious …. He’s obviously “in the wind” …..
At this point, Ms Mazur has slipped out of focus in all of this with the answer that she was just a bookkeeper, which except for a fancy title of VP of Finance, was true. She wasn’t even a CPA, and Quickbooks was about the extent of her expertise. Although she is a defendant in this case, the arrest warrant is only for Dye.
I thought he was in the wind months ago, but then it turned out he had just been hiding in his house at the Cliffs the whole time. He may still be since the Notice cited as the trigger for the warrant was just mailed to his address by regular mail and he never checks that cluster box so he likely doesn’t know.
He has no where to run.
If that is true, then why hasn’t the Sherriff snatched him up ? Or seized assets as per the 2 Orders the sheriff has outstanding for that ? And what happened to the little dog BooBoo ?
You’re asking some very valid questions! Boo Boo could be with his sister or Melissa.
The more interesting part of that last “proof of service”, last sighting, is a table of perscription bottles. Rehab is a great hiding place.
Why has Dye not been arrested yet??? Has there been an APB issued in Greenville and Landrum???
My best guess is that the Sheriff is holding off until the last 2 remaining default judgments are booked and ordered for collection. Which brings the total of judgments up to 9 , and somewhere in the $5M range in damages. Which kind of makes sense, and fits the pattern of not acting on any of those judgement that have trickled in for 6 months until they could put a bow on all of them in one box. Stay tuned !
Concerning Ms. Mazur, she has nothing to hide from and did absolutely nothing wrong. She constantly pushed for ways to manage cost and get the company on solid ground, but the owner Jay would not listen or take the advice. Jay was living an extravagant lifestyle with fancy cars and personal drivers funded by the business. His inability to say “no” or admit that the company wasn’t doing as well as he indicated meant that he was taken advantage of sometimes and made promises he couldn’t keep. It was an inevitable disaster. With too many commitments, reluctance to cut cost, the money ran out. First he couldn’t pay commissions, then ultimately he couldn’t make payroll. It’s a sad situation for all the good people who worked there. But let’s be clear about where the blame lies. It was Jay’s company, he made the calls, and all these situations are results of his poor decisions.
It was well known that if you disagreed with Jay your days were limited, so no matter how stupid it his idea was, people just smiled and did whatever he wanted, legal or not. Just say yes Grand Wizard and get paid. It was a good gig until the money ran out. I’m not sure Mazur is completely out of the woods just yet either.Even if she was just a bookkeeper writing checks as Jay directed, she must have some clue where the money went. And if the Sheriff can’t recover sufficient assets to satisfy all the judgements, she might get a visit and have some splainin to do, Lucy !
Welp, according to the latest court filings, not only isn’t Dye running anywhere, his little sister is his sole caretaker now, and his health report makes Harvey Weinstein look like the picture of good health. And ironically, with all his looming health issues, Dye has lost his health insurance coverage too ! Reminds me of the movie “Misery” at this point. Does little sister shatter his ankles to keep her childhood bully brother out of jail ? For his own good darling ~~
His little sister needs to save the family name by doing what is right making plaintiffs whole. Save her father’s reputation and the family name from any further embarrassment and shame!
Yeah, that one ain’t gonna buff out I’m afraid. I hope the people Jaybird stole from get their money back, but I have a feeling the only money left is in that Dye Family Trust. Maybe the Bankruptcy Firm Sis hired can reveal where the money went. And maybe, just maybe, who else was complicit in the criminal fraud that was perpetrated.
Capt. Jack,
Do you know if Dye still has ownership in the hunt club? What about his Vodka business… does he still have any interest in the company?
As far as I know, he never had any ownership of the Riverbend hunt club, but he often bragged that the actual owner wanted him to buy it, but he never did. I think he created some sketchy holding company that referenced buying hunting properties, but how much of an illusion or delusion that was who knows. One of the last conversations I had with the guy was about a Plantation he said was buying, but he phrased as if it was a done deal. The Habaneros vodka hasn’t been produced since 2019, and he really never owned it either. He was gonna buy a corporate jet at one point too.
But what really took it all down was his belief that the new company he had started in Dallas was worth a billion dollars and he just couldn’t admit he had screwed the pooch no matter what it cost. Complete fantasy worthy of a Meth head. By the end of 2020 it was pretty clear that one flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Fitting that he was a perfect example of “all hat, no cattle”, in Texas !
It does seem odd to me that Payrollplans, Inc isn’t mentioned in that stack of filings since that is where the money likely went. Somebody should depose the guy who ran that shit show and ask about that.
And now no friends either.