Divorce unravels carpet business

CARRBORO -- As husband and wife, Amy Odom Williford and Said Demir Williford ran Nomadic Trading Co., selling antique, hand-woven Oriental rugs.

Now, the union has ended. The Carrboro store has closed. And the unraveling has led to a legal battle featuring allegations of $8,000 rugs being sneaked away, violence at a rug seizure, a turncoat employee who says he fears for his safety and a private detective posing as an interior designer.

At least half a dozen people claim ownership of various rugs, including the Willifords, their store manager -- who later opened his own rug shop -- and several international rug dealers. Hundreds of rugs that Amy Williford says are collectively worth more than $1 million lie in climate-controlled storage while a judge decides who owns them.

"As a generality, if you are married to a lawyer or you are married to a rug dealer, don't get divorced," said Ron O'Callaghan, the editor of the online Oriental Rug Review.

Westerners have long gone to great lengths to obtain unique, hand-dyed and woven rugs from the Middle East. And in 1995, soon after they married, the Willifords started Nomadic Trading, operating it beside the old train cars outside Carr Mill Mall. The store's collection included rugs and kilims more than 100 years old, dyed and knotted in Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan and other rug-manufacturing locales with traditions passed from generation to generation.

In an affidavit, Amy Williford said the rugs were "for the benefit of our [three] children and their future education."

In November, however, the Willifords separated, and things got ugly.

Rugs for sale

Soon after the separation, Amy Williford learned her husband had drawn up a contract that appeared to sell Nomadic Trading Co.'s assets to store manager Sukru Ugurlu for just 20 percent more than the wholesale price of the rugs. Ugurlu opened a new rug store a block away.

Williford feared her husband was trying to transfer the rugs to keep her from receiving her portion of shared property, an allegation her husband denies.

In February, Amy Williford sued her husband, Ugurlu and Nomadic Trading itself.

She got a judge to order the rugs seized until their ownership could be determined. Over the next several days, deputies secured the store, and she took inventory and put several hundred rugs in storage. The contract was nullified.

A few months later, a former Nomadic Trading employee came forward. In an affidavit, Sedat Sayar said Ugurlu had asked him to help move rugs out of the store before the sheriff arrived to supervise the seizure. One 10-by-12 rug was taken the day of the seizure, "when the sheriff was not looking," he said in the affidavit.

"I saw Demir take one of the most valuable rugs in the store and hide it in a bush behind the building," Sayar said. "That night, I saw him return to the store to retrieve the rug."

In May, the rugs that had been secretly removed were taken to Ugurlu's new shop, Sayar wrote.

Ugurlu's lawyer, Blake Norman, denies all this. He says some of the seized rugs belonged to his client, and those that looked as though they were being sneaked away were actually being picked up by dealers, who had them at Nomadic Trading on consignment.

Enter the private investigator.

The private eye

In June, Amy Williford hired Charlotte investigator M. Jeannette Ballentine, who went to the new store posing as a decorator shopping for clients.

She asked for runners, and a man at the store named "Shukru" showed her the antique rugs and runners, according to Ballentine's affidavit. Ballentine gave "Shukru" a business card with her name, saying she was from "Classical Home Interiors."