Both of the people who filed the lawsuits allege their respective luxury golf clubs, Glenwild and Wohali, retaliated against them for blowing the whistle on alleged financial misdeeds.
The lawsuits against Glenwild, a gated community above Kimball Junction, also accuse its board of bootlegging rare wines from Evanston, Wyoming, to stock the club’s wine cellar.
DABS investigates Glenwild, finds no evidence
Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services Director Tiffany Clason said her agency became aware of the alleged illegal wine program in 2022.
“In the course of the investigation, again, working with the [attorney general’s] office and our law enforcement partners, we didn't find evidence,” Clason told KPCW. “There was no evidence revealed at that time that would have resulted in an immediate violation.”
The bootlegging allegations resurfaced in a December lawsuit filed by Barry Baker, a longtime Park City-area resident who said he was the 15th member of Glenwild Golf Club and Spa. According to his lawsuits, he also helped found Park City Hospital and Temple Har Shalom.
Baker and his wife owned the former Kimball Junction bowling alley Jupiter Bowl, so he said he needed to know Utah liquor laws.
He claims Glenwild’s board of directors decided to hire a “wine and alcohol director” in September 2021 who would report directly to the board and not the club’s general manager.
He said the new employee shipped wine otherwise unavailable in Utah to a P.O. box in Evanston, Wyoming, for Glenwild’s newly constructed “world class wine cellar.”
But Baker claims the club imported so much wine it couldn’t store it all and had to do so offsite.
Baker said he told Jimmy Berg, then-club board president, something illegal might be going on in September 2022. Baker said he believes the subsequent internal investigation was superficial. He said board members scapegoated the general manager and then the wine and alcohol director was “quietly terminated” a month later.
Baker said when he pushed Berg to report the incident to the DABS, Berg became angry and threatened to post his photo in the clubhouse captioned “because of this a--hole, the club can’t serve liquor.”
“After the call, Mr. Berg ranted to another member that Mr. Baker would never play Glenwild again,” Baker’s lawsuit states.
Glenwild did report the operation to the DABS in December 2022, according to the lawsuit, and the agency allowed the club to keep its liquor license.
“Though, because of the allegations and the concerns, that was a really great opportunity to talk to the new management there, the new board, and to make it extremely clear, abundantly clear, what is lawful, what is not lawful,” Clason said.
Financial concerns on the course
Baker has also accused Glenwild’s board of “fiscal mismanagement.”
Club members incorporated Glenwild as a nonprofit and created the board of directors in 2018. Between then and 2022, Baker claims its cash reserves dwindled from $12 million to $5 million even though it had raised $7 million from new memberships.
He claims the board sought to raise the cost of memberships and reduce the equity members could gain from them in a 2022 bylaw amendment. Baker publicly opposed the amendment.
According to his lawsuits, Baker’s opposition to the bylaw amendment, his fiscal concerns and his bootleg whistle-blowing led to retaliation. He filed lawsuits for defamation and to dissolve the board of directors on Dec. 20, 2024.
Glenwild responded in court Jan. 21, 2025, saying Baker needs to raise his concerns through internal channels, like mediation. Baker claims he already asked for mediation and the club turned him down.
Baker said Glenwild “was hemorrhaging millions of dollars per year while other golf clubs in Utah and elsewhere flourished.”
Meanwhile, at least one other club, Wohali, was having internal issues of its own.
Parallel allegations at Wohali
Eighteen miles up Interstate 80, the Coalville-area golf club bears many similarities to Glenwild. Both are exclusive and expensive.
The gated communities have their own winter and summer trail systems, and Wohali offers private backcountry skiing.
Wohali means “eagle” in Cherokee. It’s younger, founded about two decades after Glenwild, which boasts a Tom Fazio-designed golf course. And a student of Fazio, David Boyden, designed Wohali’s course.
Wohali was developed on land across Interstate 80 from Coalville that Boyden’s family homesteaded generations ago.
Boyden, John Kaiser and Thomas Cottone are the club’s founding partners. Boyden had access to land, Kaiser was a contractor and Cottone had the capital.
Cottone, an anesthesiologist and CFO of an east coast anesthesiology group, has turned on his former partners in a lawsuit reminiscent of Baker’s.
Many more homes are planned for Wohali. When they are built, the club envisions Scottish-inspired village living. For now, most of the units are second homes; owners aren’t allowed to live there full time.
Cottone brought in numerous investors and secured millions in loans, according to his lawsuit.
That included a 2021 $14 million “bridge loan” to keep the project afloat around the same time it had trouble securing building permits from Coalville City. Cottone claims to have leveraged all his assets, homes, retirement savings and more to secure it.
In the lawsuit filed Jan. 17, 2025, he said he didn’t know an Arizona court had previously ordered Kaiser and an earlier partner to pay investors in another development $515,000 in damages.
Cottone said he was appointed CFO of and received ownership stakes in various business entities responsible for Wohali’s development in exchange for the financing.
He was a managing member of Setauket, the investor group named after New York’s affluent Long Island town where he met Kaiser.
But Cottone claims he discovered unexpected profits on the balance sheet of Wohali Builders, Kaiser and Boyden’s in-house construction company.
He said they told investors they’d take a $250,000 salary, later doubled, but not profits from Wohali’s construction. Cottone claims to have seen the balance sheets proving they did take profits.
He accused them of self-dealing: overcharging the investors with the building company they owned an 80% stake in.
Claims of smear campaigns
Their situations are unrelated, but both Baker and Cottone said their clubs retaliated when they raised concerns.
Both are suing for defamation in 3rd District Court, asking for an uncertain amount of damages to be determined at trial.
Cottone wants at least $65 million. Baker filed an extra lawsuit to dissolve Glenwild’s board and appoint a receiver to manage its assets.
The men allege their clubs disciplined them in hearings without due process.
In the case of Glenwild, Baker called it “Soviet-style justice.” He alleges the club scheduled a hearing when he’d be out of town, so he couldn’t attend.
As for Wohali, Cottone said he was muted during video conference hearings where Kaiser and a friend, former FBI agent Matthew Galioto, criticized him.
Both said the hearings were part of successful smear campaigns to discredit them and their concerns.
Baker’s Glenwild membership was revoked, reinstated and revoked again, he said in the defamation suit.
Through attorneys Mark Morris and Ryan Alba, Glenwild declined to comment. The golf club responded by asking 3rd District Judge Richard Mrazik to dismiss Baker’s complaint or force mediation.
Glenwild also said it offered Baker multiple hearing dates to accommodate his schedule, which he did not make an effort to attend.
Cottone was removed from Wohali’s investor group and from his financial management roles. He claims in part because Galioto used his FBI experience investigating white collar crimes to turn investors and employees against him. Cottone said they falsely accused him of assuming his salary, financial positions and ownership stakes unilaterally.
He sued Kaiser and Galioto for defamation. They have yet to file a response.
Attorney Walter Romney Jr. told KPCW that Kaiser and Galioto “believe the lawsuit and the allegations contained in the complaint to be frivolous, without merit, and that they will vigorously defend against the allegations.” They’re not commenting further until they’ve been able to “digest” Cottone’s allegations.
Neither Boyden nor Wohali are named as defendants in any lawsuit and didn’t want to comment either, according to Romney.
The cases are all on 3rd District Judge Richard Mrazik’s desk. So far, no court dates have been set in any of the cases.
