Report Reveals Questionable Real Estate Deals For Once-Respected, Now-Convicted University Administrator

In Nashville, Tennessee, The Tennessean reports:

• She's a university administrator. A nurse. A grandmother. A grifter. And now, a felon. The strange separate lives of Pamela Gail Holder collided in a federal courtroom in Nashville last week. Holder, who once chaired the nursing programs at both Middle Tennessee State University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, faced four felony charges of bank and wire fraud.

• Her defense, laid out by her attorney, character witnesses and even one of her sons, was that she was a victim who had been bullied and verbally abused by her husband. Fred Rudder Holder, the defense argued, was a con man who brainwashed his cowed wife into going along with his schemes. The court heard her defense, then convicted her on all four counts and sentenced her to a year and a day in prison.

• She and her husband, who died in 2008, had used the name and good credit history of a woman who makes less in a year than Holder earned in one semester. They used it to buy diamond jewelry and a $1.5 million home for themselves. When they couldn't make the payments, the home went into foreclosure and the creditors went after the name on the loan payments — the so-called straw buyer.

• But what didn't come up in trial were the other times she's apparently done the exact same thing.(1)

For more, see MTSU professor left trail of deceit, shady dealings (Fraud conviction is just the latest in decade of duplicity).

(1) Over the past decade, Pam Holder has headed the MTSU nursing program, served as interim associate dean for the College of Basic & Applied Sciences and headed the online nursing degree program for the Tennessee Board of Regents, according to the story. At the same time, Pam and Fred Holder reportedly went through two bankruptcies and were hauled into small-claims court almost two dozen times by angry creditors, which forced the university to garnishee part of Holder's paycheck to repay part of her debts. The past decade also saw the Holders move into and out of more than a half-dozen homes in Middle Tennessee, some with seven-figure price tags, the story states.