Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

The bankruptcy filing gives Alfred Dowe a chance to keep his house.

Alfred Dowe, whose questionable spending on meals and travel forced him from the Roanoke City Council last year, has run into more financial trouble.

Dowe filed for personal bankruptcy this week.

Last April, two months after he resigned from the city council, Dowe's debts began to pile up when he lost his job as a financial representative with Northwestern Mutual Financial Network, his bankruptcy attorney said Wednesday.

At the time Dowe quit his job, the company was investigating several possible policy violations, according to records from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Among the allegations: that Dowe borrowed money from his clients and commingled his Northwestern dealings with another business activity. The investigation ended with no findings when Dowe resigned.

Dowe went from a well-paying professional job to taking calls for Home Shopping Network, said Carter "Chip" Magee, a Roanoke attorney who filed the bankruptcy petition.

"The reason we filed is that Alfred went from making close to six digits a year to $1,800 a month," Magee said.

Meanwhile, a state police investigation continues into Dowe's travel expenses as a member of the city council. Special prosecutor Christopher Russell called for the investigation last year, after it was disclosed that Dowe had billed both the city and the state for some of the nearly $15,000 in travel expenses he ran up in 2007.

"It's very close to wrapping up," Russell said Wednesday. He declined to say, however, whether he has decided to seek criminal charges.

The financial difficulties that led Dowe to file for bankruptcy were not a factor in whatever might have happened with his travel spending as a member of city council, Magee said.

"It's too far back in the past," Magee said of Dowe's travel expenses, which were first reported by The Roanoke Times in February.

In a petition filed Monday in bankruptcy court for the Western District of Virginia, Dowe listed his number of creditors at between one and 49. He estimated his assets at between $100,001 and $500,000, and put his liabilities in the same range.

Dowe filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 7 rules, which usually involve liquidating the filer's property to pay off his creditors.

The bankruptcy filing gives Dowe a chance to keep his house on Aspen Grove Court Northwest in Roanoke, at least for now. He had fallen behind in mortgage payments, and the bank had scheduled a foreclosure auction for Tuesday of this week. The sale was canceled after Dowe filed for bankruptcy.

"This is a stopgap effort to give Alfred 60 to 90 days to make a decision on what he's going to do with the rest of his life," Magee said about the timing of the bankruptcy.

With his current income, Dowe's paycheck was totally consumed by his mortgage and child support payments, Magee said. And even with bankruptcy protection, Dowe still faces the risk of losing his house.

As for Dowe's former job with Northwestern Mutual, some details of his departure are posted on the Web site of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a private regulator of security companies.

Dowe resigned voluntarily from Northwestern on April 22, according to FINRA. At the time, the company was investigating whether Dowe had violated policy by doing four things: borrowing money from clients, failing to disclose personal liens, failing to disclose to his employer an outside business activity, and commingling his Northwestern work with that for another business activity.

The internal investigation never led to any findings of misconduct, according to a statement Wednesday from John Lichtenstein and John Fishwick, the two attorneys who represent Dowe on the travel spending case.

"Mr. Dowe voluntarily resigned his position with Northwestern to prevent distraction from his clients and the company," the statement read.

A spokesman for the regulatory authority would not elaborate on the material posted to the Web site.

Meredyth Naramore, a spokeswoman for Northwestern Mutual, confirmed that Dowe is no longer a financial representative contracted with the company. She had no comment on the regulatory authority's details of his leaving the company.

Dowe has been the subject of two liens filed in Roanoke Circuit Court over unpaid child support. He has worked part time in the past as a player mentor for the National Basketball Association while also holding a financial job. And at least one person who dined with Dowe on the city taxpayers' dime has said the councilman gave him a sales pitch for a life insurance policy with Northwestern during the meal.

However, it was not clear if those instances were the ones referred to by the regulatory authority.

Dowe's political downfall began in February, when it was reported that he had spent nearly $15,000 on meals and travel for city-related business in 2007 -- almost as much as the rest of the seven-member council combined.

At first, Dowe defended the sum as the cost of becoming a more engaged leader. But he resigned when the double billing came to light.

According to documents obtained through the state's open-records law, Dowe submitted claims to the state for reimbursement for his mileage and hotel stays for trips to Richmond to attend meetings of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, a state agency for which he was a board member.

Dowe had already charged a rental car and the same hotel bill to his city-issued credit card for about a half-dozen of the trips to Richmond, the vouchers showed.

Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell has said that knowingly getting paid by two entities for the same expenses could constitute a criminal charge, either embezzlement or obtaining money by false pretenses.

Because Dowe interned in the prosecutor's office as both a high school and college student, Caldwell asked for a special prosecutor.

Since Russell was appointed in July, the case has moved slowly, in part because he had to seek approval from the attorney general before starting an investigation of an elected official.

Questions also have been raised about whether Dowe charged city taxpayers for attending out-of-town conferences that never happened.

An investigation by Roanoke's municipal auditor found $7,138.24 in improper expenses. Dowe has already reimbursed the city nearly $6,000.

"Mr. Dowe has cooperated with all parties in this matter and looks forward to the opportunity to continue such cooperation," his attorneys said in their statement.