As far as swindlers went, the late Kirk Wright hadn’t quite ascended to the top of the mountain. But he was fast coming within range. Wright, 37, had started and run International Management Associates (IMA), an Atlanta-based hedge fund which came to amass somewhere between $150 million and $200 million in paper assets. The problem was that these assets weren’t worth much more than the paper they were printed on. The fund collapsed in 2006, triggering a rash of federal indictments. The Securities and Exchange Commission slapped Wright with a separate $20 million civil suit. Other legal action resulted, too, most notably a civil suit filed by several retired pro football players against their union, the NFL Players Association, plus the NFL itself and certain individuals for failing to perform due diligence on Wright. The players had lost a combined $20 million or more.
Wright, a resident of Marietta, … Read More ➡
It’s become a familiar story. High-paid professional athletes, advised by aggressive financial managers, put their assets in investments that go bust. In football alone, casualties have included Tony Dorsett, Lawrence Taylor and the late Johnny Unitas. Now several former pro football players burned out of an estimated combined $20 million believe they have a case against both their league and union. On Thursday, March 29, they got a major piece of good news in Atlanta federal court. U.S. District Judge Julie E. Carnes denied a motion to dismiss their civil suit against the National Football League, the National Football League Players Association, and several unidentified entities whose job it was to perform background checks of investment managers.