COEUR d'ALENE - Marshall Chesrown filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy protection against $72 million in debts last month, and he is expected to appear in a southern Florida federal bankruptcy court Monday.

According to court filings, Chesrown still takes home about $13,500 a month after taxes, but his monthly expenses exceed $24,000. Most of that expense is a $4,000 Mercedes payment and two mortgages totaling over $8,000.

He is currently employed as an automotive consultant.

Chesrown reported his total assets at $514,000, most of which is equity in his Liberty Lake, Wash., home at Legacy Ridge.

He is currently renting a place in Delray Beach, Fla., where his personal expenses between Feb. 15 and May 15 totaled nearly $80,000. That sum included a trip to Las Vegas in March, where he spent at least $9,100.

Chesrown will appear in bankruptcy court Monday in West Palm Beach.

The 177-page bankruptcy filing includes $15.3 million in secured debt, and more than 400 unsecured debts totaling $56.6 million.

Many of those unsecured debtors include North Idaho businesses, such as ACI Northwest, which is owed $1.4 million. Northwest Fence Company is owed $95,000, Kootenai Electric is owed a little more than $100,000, and Polin Young Construction is left holding the bag for $145,000.

He also listed 16 lawsuits and administrative proceedings in his filing, and six of those were still pending in the legal system at the time of his filing.

Chesrown grew up in Spokane but moved away and made a small fortune with an automobile dealership in Denver.

When he returned to the Inland Northwest in the late 1990s, Chesrown announced plans to develop a high-end gated golfing community called The Club at Black Rock, which was highly successful.

He attempted to develop similar gated communities, such as Legacy Ridge in Liberty Lake. He was actively developing two other projects, Black Rock North near the original Black Rock, and Kendall Yards, a downtown Spokane riverfront development he bought out of the Metropolitan Mortgage bankruptcy in 2005.

Three years later, the project stalled and Chesrown found himself tied up in an $8 million legal dispute with Union Pacific Railroad over the environmental cleanup of the old rail yard.

At the same time, around 2008, the economy began collapsing and the housing market crashed along with many of Chesrown's automobile dealerships, which provided cash flow for his development projects.

Banks began foreclosing on his developments, which eventually led to his bankruptcy filing in May.

Several of the more prominent legal actions during the collapse of Chesrown's Coeur d'Alene-area empire occurred in 2010 and early 2011.

In August 2010, The Press reported that the assets of Chesrown's Club at Black Rock had been transferred from The Club at Black Rock LLC to the project's primary lender, Washington Trust Bank. Spokane attorney Barry W. Davidson, representing Chesrown, said that according to market values at the time, the assets of the Club at Black Rock were believed to be worth less than the indebtedness. The assets included the golf course, 31,000-square-foot clubhouse, fitness facilities and maintenance equipment.

In February 2011, Mountain West Bank filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Chesrown and other debtors for non-payment on loans that were made for a planned luxury development project on Lake Coeur d'Alene. The loans were related to Chesrown 's Ridge at Sunup Bay project and the suit was filed in 1st District Court in Kootenai County.

At the time of the lawsuit, The Ridge at Sunup Bay was described as a private gated waterfront community consisting of 33 estate-size properties. Each 3-to 20-acre parcel included a view of Lake Coeur d'Alene and a private boat slip. The development's website said only about a half-dozen of the lots had been sold by February of that year.

The following month, in March 2011, The Press reported that after two years of negotiations, American Bank and Chesrown's Black Rock Development had finalized terms on the foreclosure of Black Rock North, a private golf community north of The Club at Black Rock.

"Essentially the collapse of the real estate market that occurred after 2007 has rendered many projects unfeasible," Chesrown's attorney explained at the time. "Especially with the lack of access to capital, and the lack of sales in high-end real estate projects and developments."

Black Rock North, an unfinished project on 1,100 acres, had an underlying indebtedness of $17.6 million, Davidson said.

The bank filed a foreclosure suit in February 2009, he said, and since then Black Rock had been in negotiations with the bank and other entities involved in the development.

Managing Editor Mike Patrick contributed to this report.