Teksupport's TAG Bankruptcy: Inside Courtroom 3B
In Courtroom 3B of the federal bankruptcy court in Newark, the Chapter 11 case of Technical Arts Group has been hanging since 2025. The room is cold. Even in summer, you can catch a light chill: no windows, four rows of wooden benches, and, up front, two rows of chairs upholstered in green leather that look more comfortable than they are. Everyone I have watched sit in them goes from focused to antsy. There must be a thorn in that leather somewhere. Justice, maybe. Is it the judge? The law? Or, in the case of Richard Trenk, TAG's bankruptcy attorney, something else entirely? I was still turning this over when "All rise" hit my eardrums.
Trenk, once again, did not come alone. Kevin Mignone, TAG's officer of record, walked in beside him with the empty look I have come to expect. If his courtroom training had one rule, it seemed to be: speak only to your lawyer, and never look the press in the eye. In the darkest of navy suits, behind glasses big enough to pass for jeweler's loupes, he fixed his attention on a point somewhere in space.
Once everyone had risen for Judge Vincent F. Papalia and sat back down, the not-so-friendly exchange began–first, the background.
On August 12, according to a declaration filed on Robert Toma's behalf, Insomniac, the festival company behind EDC, wired $500,000 into an account belonging to United Interior Group LLC, a company Michael Vitacco owns. The balance jumped from roughly $14,432 to $514,432. Within six days, Toma alleges, $350,000 had gone out to cover Vitacco's personal obligations and legal bills. Toma's position is that the money was a diverted receivable: business that belonged to TCE, TAG, or their affiliate SAVI. Vitacco denies it under penalty of perjury. He says the payment came from a private agreement with Insomniac, which he has offered to show the court privately but not on the public docket. On September 16, Judge Thomas D. McCloskey of New Jersey Superior Court, who oversees Toma v. Vitacco, declined to rule either way and sent the payment to the court-appointed Special Fiscal Agent, Ian Lagowitz, for an expedited investigation, with a report due October 16. Then, on September 28, the day before this hearing, Toma's attorney Ross Fox wrote to McCloskey that a "cursory review" of the companies' own email had turned up Insomniac's name in more than 330 emails, more than 10,600 times, in 2026 alone. "This is not earlier work," Fox wrote. The question in Newark was whether a trustee should take TAG out of its current management's hands.
Everyone else was outside the courtroom, on screens: Toma, Vitacco, Vitacco's personal lawyers, and an attorney offered as a potential witness whose name had never appeared on any witness list. Papalia was as baffled as I was. The list "has to be advanced notice," he said. "I'm confused."
Toma has cycled through four law firms since February, ending up back with the lawyer he started with. TAG itself is on its second bankruptcy counsel. The turnover clearly wore on the judge.
Next to Trenk, Fox was the opposite: fresh, measured, apologetic almost to a fault.
Trenk's method is the work of an evil genius. During TAG's adversary case against AVS, which won the 2024 auction of TAG's equipment, I watched him interrupt AVS's attorney, Warren J. Martin Jr., more than 25 times, with absolutely no exaggeration. Even the judge seemed amused. Today he ran the same play. At first, Trenk reads as neurotic, passionate, even unhinged. He is none of those. He is very good at this. Every interruption is a move in a psychological war. His opponent, whether a witness, a colleague, or the judge himself, is only human, and God help us keep it that way. Each time Trenk cuts in, the other person has to stop, react, and rebuild a train of thought he just derailed. It is a toddler's tantrum performed by a grown man, and it works.
Trenk had no trouble calling this, out loud, the "Vitacco–Toma wars," as if reading the title of the play he was staging. Fair enough; that is what this is. What doesn't hold up is the part he wrote for Kevin Mignone: the man in control of TAG, the client Trenk advises. On paper, Mignone is exactly that. He co-founded the company and is listed as its officer on its state tax filings. Inside the company, the story is different. Current and former TAG workers, who spoke to UNMIXED on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, describe Mignone as Vitacco's right hand, the man who carries out Vitacco's orders. It is, they say, an open secret, repeated at every show TAG or TCE has run.
Trenk then turned sentimental. He called the filing Fox submitted the day before the hearing a last-minute move, then dismissed it as an "AI exposé." A bankruptcy courtroom was the last place I needed to be reminded of humanity's newest existential threat. If his target was Fox's email count, the jab didn't answer it. The number is either right or wrong, whoever, or whatever, did the counting.
Papalia might have been kinder to Toma if Toma had ever shown up in person. He has never set foot in Courtroom 3B. Neither has Vitacco.
When Martin finally got a second on camera, Trenk cut him off immediately. Anything that didn't fit the script got talked over. Papalia, a seasoned, impartial judge who has been trying to close out what he called "unending litigation," had clearly had enough of the games. Fox apologized again. He is a nice guy. Whatever TAG's lawyers bill, meanwhile, the court pays it out of the bankruptcy estate, with its approval, as an administrative expense, ahead of any unpaid wages owed to TAG's workers.
Nor had the judge forgotten the $11 million question we have reported on: the gap between the value TAG's own balance sheet assigned its production assets and the $2.55 million bid that won them for AVS at a November 2024 auction. He asked it again. No one answered. It is still hanging in the air.
For now there will be no trustee. The state court has already appointed an independent fiscal agent, Papalia noted, and he wants to see that analysis before he acts. So while the state court weighs what becomes of Teksupport, including a possible wind-down, the federal court has put the brakes on TAG.
"There is no Insomniac–TAG relationship," Trenk told the court. The record says otherwise. On September 16, McCloskey wrote that the companies' own email chain "supports that Insomniac had at least one prior business relationship involving TCE and TAG personnel." However, he noted it concerned earlier work. A quote TAG prepared for Insomniac for equipment sits in the record as an exhibit. If the relationship existed before, it is fair to ask what would have stopped it from continuing.
Near the end, Trenk found a moment to mention the only other non-lawyer in the room: me. "Media is here, and I'm concerned," he told the judge, as if the problem were a reporter in the gallery and not what moves between two operating companies and their web of affiliates. But, dear Mr. Trenk, the bankruptcy of a company with workers, creditors and clients across New York's club scene is a public matter, and a bankruptcy courtroom is a public room.
"Is there a reason you're not paying some of your employees?" I asked Mignone as I held the door at the courthouse entrance. He looked through me, said nothing, and walked away. A few yards off, he started gesturing loudly, too far away for me to hear. Maybe that was his answer. The question, after all, was worth throwing your hands in the air over. A follow-up request for comment, sent through his attorney, had not been answered by publication time.
UNMIXED contacted Michael Vitacco; Kevin Mignone, through TAG's counsel, Richard Trenk; Mr. Trenk himself; and Robert Toma's counsel, Ross Fox. None had responded at the time of publication. This story will be updated with any response.
