{"id":47457,"date":"2026-03-12T20:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T20:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/atlanta-housewives-newcomer-pinky-cole-breaks-down-what-drove-her-to-bankruptcy\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T20:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T20:31:20","slug":"atlanta-housewives-newcomer-pinky-cole-breaks-down-what-drove-her-to-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/atlanta-housewives-newcomer-pinky-cole-breaks-down-what-drove-her-to-bankruptcy\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlanta &#8216;Housewives&#8217; newcomer Pinky Cole breaks down what drove her to bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69b2f5884d65ec517529e9c7?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Pinky Cole.\"\/><figcaption>Aisha &quot;Pinky&quot; Cole founded Slutty Vegan in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Paras Griffin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Slutty Vegan founder Aisha &quot;Pinky&quot; Cole filed for personal bankruptcy protection last month.<\/li>\n<li>At a creditors&#039; meeting on Thursday, she said business debt led her to file for bankruptcy.<\/li>\n<li>Cole also faced questioning from an IRS official over three years of &quot;missing&quot; tax returns.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Aisha &quot;Pinky&quot; Cole, the founder of the fast-food chain Slutty Vegan and the newest cast member of the coming season of &quot;The Real Housewives of Atlanta,&quot; said on Thursday that &quot;business debt&quot; drove her to personal bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>Testifying under oath during a meeting of creditors in her bankruptcy case, the 38-year-old entrepreneur said she had personally guaranteed much of her business&#039;s debt, prompting creditors to pursue her for repayment.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The creditors were coming after me,&quot; said Cole, who is set to star in Season 17 of &quot;The Real Housewives of Atlanta&quot; next month.<\/p>\n<p>Cole launched Slutty Vegan in 2018 from a shared kitchen in Atlanta, before the business grew into more than a dozen brick-and-mortar locations.<\/p>\n<p>At its peak, the business \u2014 known for plant-based burgers like the &quot;Sloppy Toppy&quot; or the &quot;Super Slut&quot; \u2014 was reportedly worth $100 million. Though the business has faced financial struggles in recent years, several outposts still remain open.<\/p>\n<p>At the Thursday meeting of creditors, a federal bankruptcy trustee asked Cole how many bank accounts she currently had, to which she responded, &quot;personally none.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I actually just closed my personal bank account the day after retaining counsel. I was not aware that I needed to close my existing bank account,&quot; Cole said, adding that the account held about $6 when it was closed.<\/p>\n<p>When asked if she had any source of income, Cole said, &quot;not personally,&quot; before clarifying that she has multiple properties that she rents out.<\/p>\n<p>Under questioning from a representative of a South Carolina-based mortgage lender, Cole said she collects $1,500 a month in rent from one Georgia property and $1,800 a month from another. She added that she plans to lease another property beginning next month for $3,000 a month.<\/p>\n<h2>Three years of &#039;missing&#039; tax returns<\/h2>\n<p>Cole personally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Georgia federal court last month, allowing her to reorganize her debts under court supervision in hopes of making them more manageable. Her filing estimated assets worth $1 million to $10 million and estimated liabilities in the same range.<\/p>\n<p>Her handwritten bankruptcy petition shows that she owes $1.2 million to the US Small Business Administration for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan, plus $192,000 in state taxes to the Georgia Department of Revenue.<\/p>\n<p>When Cole initially filed for Chapter 11, she did so as a &quot;pro se&quot; debtor, meaning she was not represented by a lawyer. But on Thursday, she told the trustee that she &quot;soon realized&quot; she needed an attorney and hired one.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We&#039;re actually working on amendments now, because I realized there&#039;s a lot of amendments that need to be made,&quot; Cole told the trustee.<\/p>\n<p>During the creditors&#039; meeting, Cole also faced questioning from an IRS official over three years of &quot;missing&quot; tax returns.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We&#039;re showing that you are missing 2020, 2023, and 2024, and we show that there is income for those years,&quot; the official said, requesting that those tax returns be filed &quot;preferably&quot; by the next creditors&#039; meeting in mid-April.<\/p>\n<p>Cole&#039;s bankruptcy attorney, Jamie Christy, then told the official she would reach out to Cole&#039;s accountant &quot;and see if we can figure this out before April 17.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In a statement to Business Insider, Christy said: &quot;We will be amending her schedules. Until then, no other comments will be made. Ms. Cole has retained me to aid her in her bankruptcy and that is what I will do.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>Rapping about bankruptcy<\/h2>\n<p>Cole appears to be taking her Chapter 11 restructuring filing in stride.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent Instagram video, Cole \u2014 dressed as children&#039;s educational YouTube star Ms. Rachel \u2014 broke down the bankruptcy process in a catchy rap set to the tune of Soulja Boy&#039;s &quot;Crank That.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Bankruptcy let&#039;s learn code, seven liquidate and roll, 11 you reorganize, 13 pay it back slow,&quot; she sang. &quot;Now watch me file that bankruptcy, file that bankruptcy, file that bankruptcy, file that bankruptcy.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Slutty Vegan entered a state-level restructuring process amid mounting debt that temporarily cost Cole ownership of the business, before she ultimately bought the brand back.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It got to the point where I was paying $80,000 a week in payroll on my own. And I had to surrender,&quot; Cole told Forbes in a 2025 interview. &quot;Surrendering was the best thing that I could have ever done. Because what it taught me is that business is not a straight road, right? You&#039;re gonna get a flat tire here and there. But it&#039;s all about the bounce back, and I&#039;m in my bounce back era.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aisha &quot;Pinky&quot; Cole founded Slutty Vegan in 2018. Paras Griffin\/Getty Images Slutty Vegan founder Aisha &quot;Pinky&quot; Cole filed for personal bankruptcy protection last month. At a creditors&#039; meeting on Thursday, she said business debt led her to file for bankruptcy. Cole also faced questioning from an IRS official over three years of &quot;missing&quot; tax returns. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}