Kirk Wright

Circuit Court Sides with NFL, Players Union in Fraud Suit

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 20:09

footballKirk Wright has been dead for almost three years. But the legacy of his mismanagement and fraud remains very much alive - most of all in the minds of a half-dozen now-retired National Football League players taken for a collective $20 million ride. On November 23, a panel for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled in Atwater et al. v. NFL Players Association that neither the NFL nor the association were liable for financial losses sustained by Wright, an Atlanta-area hedge fund manager. Criminal as Wright's Ponzi scheme was, argued the court, the plaintiffs in this civil suit bore the ultimate responsibility of performing due diligence. The decision, formally speaking, may be sound. Yet it also suggests that the union - i.e., the Players Association - has been less than diligent in its representation.

Atlanta Hedge Fund Manager Found Guilty, Kills Self

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 06/16/2008 - 00:00

As far as swindlers went, 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.

Player Suit Against NFL, Union in Hedge-Fund Scam to Proceed

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 04/09/2007 - 00:00

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.

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