Updated at 1:11 p.m.
An overflow crowd of Fair Finance Co. investment certificate holders and other creditors met Monday in downtown Akron.
The afternoon meeting was held in a ballroom at the Akron City Centre Hotel, 20 W. Mill St. U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Akron does not have a room large enough to hold the expected large gathering.
The meeting was to be a ''quasi-judicial proceeding'' with no cameras or recording devices allowed.
Court-appointed trustee Brian Bash was to run the meeting, give an update on Fair Finance bankruptcy proceedings and take questions.
A half an hour before the meeting was to start, there was standing room only.
A line of people through the area outside of the ballroom as people waited to get inside.
About 20 minutes before the meeting, panels were being removed to make the ballroom larger to accomodate the crowd. The ballroom holds 250 people and a second ballroom was being opened up as hotel staff told Bash a line of people waiting to get in was wrapped around the building.
Bash said he was not anticipating the large crowd.
"This far exceeded what I anticipated," Bash said.
He said some told him perhaps only 25 creditors would show up.
For more information, including a look at court documents and the trustee's latest status reports, go to the trustee's Fair Finance site on the Internet, at http://www.fairfinancetrustee.com.
More than 5,000 creditors purchased more than $200 million in investment certificates from Fair Finance, which is under investigation. Most of the certificate holders live in the greater Akron-Canton area.
