Nashville Bike Week: Organizer Arrested In Kentucky; Event 'Still On'

BOWLING GREEN, KY — The convicted fraudster who is one of the organizers of the purported Nashville Bike Week event was arrested in Kentucky Monday on a number of outstanding warrants.

Mike Leffingwell — whose also goes by the name Mike Axel — was arrested by Warren County, Ky. Sheriff's deputies at the Country Hearth Motel near the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green Monday. The sheriff's office said it was tipped off as to his location. (For more updates on this story and free news alerts for your neighborhood, sign up for your local Middle Tennessee Patch morning newsletter.)

Leffingwell is wanted on multiple outstanding warrants in Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri on a variety of charges ranging from probation violations to failure to appear to larceny. In 2007, Leffingwell was sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered by a U.S. District Court Judge in Missouri to pay nearly a quarter of a million dollars in restitution after defrauding numerous companies by presenting himself as a NASCAR truck series driver and signing those companies up for advertising deals for the 2006 NASCAR season. Leffingwell drove in just four NASCAR events between September 2001 and July 2005 and in none after engaging in his scheme. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud and for failure to appear.Leffingwell has also been the subject of numerous Better Business Bureau complaints, not just in Tennessee but in West Virginia as well, typically about uncompleted but paid-for work.

Nashville Bike Week is scheduled for September 14 through 24. Originally planned for Loretta Lynn's Ranch in Hurricane Mills, it has bounced around from venue to venue and is still without a home; however, on the event's Facebook page organizers — presumably not including Leffingwell — said the event would go on.

Image via Humphreys County Sheriff's Office