Pandemic Darlings The pandemic economy, in original documents
Home Profiles Barry Calhoun

Profiles · PrincipalsControversial

ProfilePerson

Barry Calhoun

Executive

PPP
Type
Person
Role
Executive
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

Chief Executive Officer of Blueacorn from March 2021. Addressee of the House Select Subcommittee's November 22, 2021 letter; dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction from Womply's fee suit (N.D. Tex. 3:21-cv-02636-B). He has not been charged with any crime.

Individuals whose conduct was challenged or called into question during or after the pandemic. See sources: Clyburn letter, Nov. 22, 2021 Order dismissing claims, April 11, 2022

In the archive

Identity and role

Barry Calhoun became Chief Executive Officer of Blueacorn in March 2021. The company had been founded in April 2020 by Nathan Reis, Stephanie Hockridge and others; Calhoun arrived eleven months later. Eight months after that he was the named recipient of the House Select Subcommittee's November 22, 2021 oversight letter (letter). He is now Co-Managing Partner of BLSQ Management (BLSQ).

Biography / career arc

By BLSQ Management's account he has spent much of his career restructuring companies and arranging financing (BLSQ; LinkedIn, self-reported). Before Blueacorn he was a Director at Bayard Business Capital and Consulting (from 2017), overseeing credit and equity solutions for businesses and commercial-real-estate investors. Earlier he was a Managing Director at Larson Capital Management, an alternative-investment manager, where he ran the firm and its real-estate funds. Before that he held senior wealth-management roles at Bank of America and U.S. Bank, focused on liquidity events for business owners and athletes/entertainers.

He called Blueacorn "a fly-by-seat-of-the-pants sort of environment" in an interview posted to Medium, as quoted in the House Select Subcommittee's December 2022 staff report ("We Are Not the Fraud Police").

Pandemic-relief role

Blueacorn was a lender service provider that packaged PPP applications and routed them to partner CDFIs (Prestamos in Phoenix and Capital Plus Financial in Bedford, Texas) for a share of the SBA's processing fees. In 2021 it forwarded 739,282 applications it told the Subcommittee it had approved and sent to lenders for funding. Blueacorn took in roughly $1.08 billion in fees, and the House report said Blueacorn and Womply together facilitated nearly one in three PPP loans funded that year.

Calhoun was CEO during the 2021 volume. The congressional report's criticisms of reviewer training and review speed describe the 2021 operation, much of it executed through the contractor Elev8 Advisors and supervised day-to-day by COO Matt Yahes. Calhoun told The New York Times in June 2021 that "tiny businesses, self-employed individuals and minority communities are left out in the cold, over and over and over," and that "addressing that is a core mission for us."

The founders' criminal conspiracy (the document fabrication and the kickback-driven "VIPPP" program) ran from April 2020 through May 2021. Reis's own sworn factual resume says he stepped back from active operations "around March 2021," which is when Calhoun arrived (United States v. Reis and Hockridge). Reis and Hockridge were convicted; see their profiles and James Flores's for the pleas, verdict and sentences.

Their own relief

No PPP or EIDL loan to Calhoun personally is established in the public record.

None of the Northern District of Texas criminal cases, against Nathan Reis, Stephanie Hockridge, Flores, Cota or Arriaga, names him.

He was a named defendant in civil litigation. Womply (OTO Analytics) sued Capital Plus Financial, Crossroads Systems, Eric Donnelly, "BA Fin Orion, LLC d/b/a Blueacorn, and Barry Calhoun" in the Northern District of Texas (No. 3:21-cv-02636-B) over roughly $76.7 million in fees Womply said it was owed. As the May 11, 2022 memorandum opinion records, the court "previously dismissed all claims against the other defendants in this case, BA Fin Orion LLC d/b/a Blueacorn and Barry Calhoun, for lack of personal jurisdiction". The dismissal was jurisdictional, not a ruling on the merits.

In Blueacorn's Delaware suit against PayNerd, PayNerd's third-party complaint of December 21, 2022 accused Calhoun, as Fin Cap's former chief executive, with Fin Cap and Blueacorn, of fraudulently inducing its second referral agreement. On August 16, 2023 the court denied the motion to dismiss that claim. It is an allegation, not a finding (Fin Cap Inc. v. PayNerd LLC, Del. Super. C.A. No. N21C-12-118 MMJ CCLD, opinion, Aug. 16, 2023).

The November 22, 2021 letter from Select Subcommittee Chairman James Clyburn, addressed to "Mr. Barry Calhoun, Chief Executive Officer," opened the congressional inquiry into Blueacorn's PPP practices. The December 2022 report made referrals and made no finding as to Calhoun. A week later the SBA suspended Blueacorn from working with the agency "in any capacity" (Banking Dive, Dec. 9, 2022).

Since 2025

Calhoun is Co-Managing Partner of BLSQ Management, which describes itself as a firm that works with mid-sized financial institutions, non-bank lenders, and other small-business lenders. He has not appeared as a defendant in the Blueacorn criminal cases or in the asset-recovery actions against the convicted founders.

Documents on this site

Original source documents

Sources

Back to top