Local bar owner denied permission to buy closed Allston pub for lying about his criminal record

The Boston Licensing Board today rejected a proposal by Derek Brady, who owns six restaurants and bars in Boston, to buy the closed White Horse Tavern on Brighton Avenue in Allston, because his application included a statement he had no criminal record when, in fact, he does.

Board members also dinged Brady, a Wellesley resident who had proposed buying the tavern and its liquor license from Allston/Brighton restaurant owner Douglas Bacon, for failing to adequately discuss why the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission suspended the license for one of his bars for 100 days and fined him $73,000 in 2012 - also for not disclosing he had a record.

Board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce said Brady's criminal record, which he mostly racked up in the 1990s, is old enough that it would not have bothered her had Brady admitted to it, rather than checking off a box, under "pains and penalties of perjury" that he had no criminal record.

She said he also wasn't honest during a July 27 public hearing on the White Horse Tavern application when he was asked why the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission suspended another one of his licenses in 2012, for a sushi place in Cambridge, at first "indefinitely" and then for 90 days.

Brady told the board it was because his corporation's request to open the restaurant "didn't have some information on there that they needed regarding my personal information and that's why they cited that." In fact, the "personal information" was that he had checked boxes averring he had no criminal record on his application for that transaction as well.

"He lied or he has not been honest in his application before us," Joyce said. "It would have been satisfactory if he had checked yes and explained."

Board members Liam Curran and Keeana Saxon agreed. Saxon said that in the eight years she's been on the board, members have "always appreciated candor and honesty" and that her vote was the "natural consequence of not being honest."

Joyce did not detail Brady's criminal record, but the ABCC, in a separate 2012 ruling rejecting his request to buy and re-open a closed bar on Causeway Street, did - and said Brady had lied repeatedly, for years, about that record, which includes seven convictions in several Massachusetts counties and even a brief jail sentence, on charges that ranged from larceny to assault. The last of the convictions was in 1998, but the commission noted an arrest warrant out of Boston Municipal Court for Brady on an unspecified charge in 2011.

At an ABCC hearing on the Causeway Street license request, Brady said he had simply forgotten he had ever been convicted of anything, let alone spent time in jail, an assertion the ABCC didn't buy:

The Commission is incredulous that an individual who has seven entries on his criminal record, which all resulted in convictions, claims to have forgotten about these criminal activities. Mr. Brady was arrested on numerous occasions, placed on probation several times, received a suspended jail sentence, and was actually committed to the house of correction for one of the offenses. The Commission does not find Mr. Brady's testimony credible, and believes he intentionally attempted to deceive this commission on three separate applications since 2006.

The commission then cited its Causeway Street ruling in its rulings on the Cambridge sushi place - the liquor-license application for which, it said, Brady had again checked "no" on questions about any past arrests or convictions.

The licensing board today denied Brady's request to buy the White Horse Tavern with prejudice, which means he has to wait at least a year to try again.

July 27 licensing-board hearing on Brady's application to buy the White Horse Tavern and its liquor license: