Downfall
Black hired James Franklin, Jr., a Columbia, South Carolina lawyer, in September 1997 to help manage the growing business. Franklin introduced Black to representatives of Cash 4 Titles, which made small loans at high interest rates to individuals who put their cars up as collateral. Cash 4 Titles was looking for investors and promising a 20% return, and offered commissions to Black’s firm for investments by his clients. Black subsequently invested his own money along with some of his clients, friends, and family. Unknown to Black at the time, Cash 4 Titles was a ponzi scheme and Franklin was secretly being paid finder's fees by Cash 4 Titles.
Black was emerging as one of America’s top African-American businessmen, and began to expand his business, including purchase of a hotel property in Detroit, where gambling had recently been legalized. The seller of the hotel, John Bryant, and an associate, Dean Parker, became friendly with Black and began to invest in Cash 4 Titles, showing up in South Carolina with bags of cash. Bryant and Parker were principals in a Detroit-based cocaine operation.
By 1999, Black was looking for new business opportunities and began preliminary talks to sell his agency to Percy Miller, better known as rap star Master P. Black's company (PMI) was estimated to be worth as much as $100 million at the time.
In 1999, a rival black agent complained to the NFL Players Association that Black was illegally providing money to college players before they were eligible for the draft. In May, the University of Florida police department formally charged Black with violating Florida laws against early recruiting of college players and executed a search warrant on Black’s Columbia, South Carolina office. In a highly questionable move, the university police turned over all of Black’s records to the NFL Players Association. Black went to court and won possession of his records back but a month later, the FBI executed a search warrant on PMI’s offices, again removing all his records and computers.
With controversy swirling around him, Black’s clients began asking for their money back from Cash 4 Titles. The company returned some of the money but was itself the subject of an SEC investigation. By Feb., 2000, Cash 4 Titles was exposed as a fraud, and Black was charged with “fraudulently causing two dozen athletes” to lose an estimated $13.5 million.
By July 2000, Black had pleaded guilty to providing loans to college players in Florida, was facing SEC fraud charges, was being sued by several of his players for the money they lost in Cash 4 Titles, and had been indicted in Detroit on money laundering and drug charges related to his involvement in Bryant’s investments in Cash 4 Titles. Black ended up pleading guilty to money laundering.
Read more about this topic: William "Tank" Black
Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)