Riches to Rags The NFL is no stranger to scams, rip-offs,
and deceit.
Sports Illustrated estimates that 78% of NFL players will go broke within three years of
ending their career.
Enter Jeff Rubin, a financial advisor, and money manager for NFL players.
He promised to manage their millions, helping them spend it wisely on bills, investments,
and insurance.
Instead, he squandered their money, costing 35 NFL stars over 40 million dollars.
How did so many athletes play right into Rubin’s poor investment choices?
And a better question is, did he know it was a scam?
Player Investments 78% is a staggering number, and while not
all of these players go broke from scams, there are plenty of examples from NFL history.
In some cases, it was the players themselves who scammed their teammates.
One famous example is Terry Orr, who convinced his teammates to invest $50 thousand dollars
into an already defunct company.
Orr was eventually busted and spent 14 months in federal prison.
A common reason why these NFL players go broke so early on is poor financial management.
The league itself has been criticized for not providing adequate financial services
for players and their newfound wealth.
Players often go from a minimum wage lifestyle to millions of dollars in their bank account
overnight.
With no proper financial literacy, how is a player expected to manage all that money
properly?
Tank Black To fully understand why so many players trusted
Rubin, you must know the story of Tank Black.
Black started his career at the University of South Carolina coaching football.
After a successful coaching career, Black decided to start a sports management company.
Professional Management Incorporated (PMI) was a sports marketing agency that helped
college athletes market themselves to professional teams.
Black's company grew, quickly amassing a client list of over 50 NFL players.
As the business grew, so did the opportunities for Black.
In 1997, PMI hired James Franklin Jr. to manage company assets.
In addition, Franklin provided financial management services for the clients of PMI.
Shortly after Franklin started his career with PMI, he pitched a company, Cash 4 Titles,
to Black.
Cash 4 Titles was a high-interest title loan provider.
They would offer loans to low-income individuals in exchange for their car title as collateral.
Eventually, news broke that the company was actually a Ponzi scheme.
Both Franklin and Black were receiving commissions for every client convinced to invest in the
company.
As a result, Black was sentenced to 82 months in federal prison on money laundering and
wire fraud charges.
He ultimately scammed more than 20 NFL and NBA players out of 12.5 Million dollars.
Jeff Rubin This is where Jeff Rubin steps into the picture.
While Black was scamming Athletes left and right, Rubin was a student at the University
of Florida.
The University of Florida is known for having produced some of the biggest names in NFL
history.
One, in particular, was Jeff Taylor.
Taylor, at the time, was represented by Black's company PMI. Rubin had befriended Taylor while
at the University of Florida.
When Taylor approached Rubin to ask for help evaluating the Cash 4 Titles deal, Rubin identified
the entire thing as a Ponzi scheme.
Rubin blew the doors of Black's scam earning the golden key to the NFL players.
They trusted him as someone who had their best interests in mind.
Unfortunately, he had a plan of his own.
Rubin Insurance After graduation, Rubin landed a job with
Northwestern Mutual selling life insurance policies.
However, his newfound NFL connections granted him access to players with money to spend.
These players didn't need life insurance policies but trusted Rubin when he told them they did.
These policies, while legal, were sold deceptively to players.
First, Rubin would receive a commission between $80,000 - $120,000 per policy.
This was an upfront payment and incentivized Rubin to sell more policies.
That said, these policies were not sold with NFL players in mind.
The terms were often short.
By the time a player needed to file a claim, the policy would have already lapsed.
Why does a healthy, 20-something-year-old NFL player need a life insurance policy?
They don't.
The only person gaining any real benefits was Rubin.
Rubin then founded Pro Sports Financial with business partner Mike McIntyre.
Pro Sports Financial was in charge of the players' money.
They'd use it to pay the players' bills, rent, mortgages, and other expenses while the athletes
focused on playing and training.
They even run errands for the players like grocery shopping.
Center Stage Casino
There were several red flags that someone should have noticed.
The first was when Rubin linked up with Ronnie Gilley, the lead developer of the Center Stage
casino project in Alabama.
Center Stage was marketed to investors as a bingo hall, bed & breakfast, restaurant,
high-end club, amphitheater, and gambling hall.
Rubin, however, wasn't brought into the project until word on the casino spread around the
then-Washington Redskins’ locker room.
Players like Santana Moss, a client of Rubin's, introduced him to Gilley, thinking he could
help with the casino project.
The Casino was in its bare-bones stage when Rubin and a few NFL investors came on board.
To show off its potential, Gilley flew them out to Victoryland, an already thriving bingo
casino owned by Milton McGregor.
Rubin was blinded by the potential.
With his skilled persuasion, Rubin convinced 35 NFL players to commit over $43 million
dollars in investments for development.
Rubin deceived players by showing artistic renderings of what the development would look
like after their cash infusion.
Unfortunately, players never saw their investments come to fruition.
Red Flags As mentioned earlier, many red flags should
have caused NFL players to be cautious.
First, Rubin had a degree in exercise science—not in finance.
At best, Rubin had a basic understanding of money management.
In 2003, Rubin was investigated by NFL player Barrett Green for allegedly mismanaging his
money.
While they did find facts to support Green's claim, nothing was done.
In 2004, Rubin settled with financial regulators over another $119-thousand claim filed against
him by Johnny Rutledge.
Rutledge, another NFL player, claimed Rubin falsified his signatures on an insurance document,
costing him the 119-thousand.
Rubin settled with Rutledge out of court, but Rutledge's agent, who referred him to
Rubin in the first place, continued to trust the scammer.
Rosenhouse Brothers The most popular sports Agent in American
is Drew Rosenhouse.
With clients such as Rob Gronkowski, Tyreek Hill, and Terrell Owens under his wing, Rosenhouse
has represented some of the biggest stars in NFL history.
However, he and his brother, Jason, fell victim to Rubin's charm.
They'd recommend their clients to Rubin since, as far as they knew, he was a trustworthy
guy.
Terrell Owens eventually filed a $6.5 Million lawsuit against Rosenhause.
Owens alleges that Rosenhaus recommended he use Rubin as a financial advisor.
Shortly after following the advice of his agent, T.O noticed his money had been unwillingly
invested into Rubin's Casino project.
18 of the 35 players Rubin got to invest in his Casino were Rosenhause clients.
Real Estate Outside of money management and bankrupt Casinos,
Rubin helped four NFL players purchase multi-million dollar mansions between 2004 and 2006.
At the time, Rubin was working with a builder, Michael Friend, who had previously been convicted
of felony fraud before his construction career.
While no official fraud was ever found related to the mansions, the nature of Rubin and Friend's
dealings was deceitful.
Plaxico Burress, infamous for shooting himself in the leg at a Florida nightclub, purchased
a home from Rubin and Friend in the Lighthouse Point neighborhood for $3.99 million.
Clinton Portis purchased his home in the same neighborhood for $4.1 million.
Santana Moss spent $5.2 million on his home.
Jevon Kearse, the last NFL player to buy a home in the neighborhood, spent a whopping
$6.2 million.
Rubin only purchased his house for $2.8 million, which was 30% less than Burress and 55% less
than Kearse.
It's thought that Friend cut Rubin a deal on his house if he could sell the remaining
homes to his NFL clientele.
He was successful and sold those homes way above market value to the players that trusted
him.
By 2012, all the homes were foreclosed on except for Kearse's.
Casino “Investment” The NFL has strict rules about players investing
in gambling operations while active in the league.
It wasn’t all that long ago that sports betting wasn’t in the most positive light.
The NFL wants to protect its reputation and prevent scandal, so it bars players from investing,
accepting sponsorship, or owning any part of a gambling operation.
Even after players retire, they can still be sued by the NFL for operating or associating
with a gambling operation, even if the operation is legal.
When it came to the Center Stage, players got around the rule because they were technically
investing in the land the Casino would be built on, not the Casino itself.
Alabama, at the time, had strict laws when it came to gambling.
Revenue earned from bino games was to be donated to charity, and only a small portion was allowed
to be taken out to cover expenses.
To mask Alabama's strict views on gambling, Rubin and his partners made it look like there
was huge local and political support to change the gambling laws in Alabama, making them
less strict.
They'd write fake comments on articles and make their investors believe that times were
changing for gambling in Alabama.
Gilley testified that he and McGregor paid a marketing company to add supportive comments
to pro-gambling articles online.
Rubin’s Downfall Rubin fell from grace as quickly as he rose.
The construction of Center Stage was completed in 2010.
Two weeks after the development officially opened, local police raided it.
Over 691 computers and $287 thousand dollars in cash were seized.
The attorney general of Alabama quickly pushed for these computers to be destroyed and the
cash turned over to the Department of Treasury.
After that, the bingo hall opened the next day with paper bingo, but the loss was already
heavy.
While the project was being constructed, the governor of Alabama had started the Anti-Gambling
Task Force to shut down illegal gambling parlors in the state.
Rubin gambled on the fact that the governor would not address the grey area in the law.
Obviously, Rubin doesn't know when to fold.
In 2008, Rubin leased a Lamborghini with the money raised from Casino Investors.
However, in 2010, after the curtain closed on Center Stage, Rubin defaulted on his lease,
still owing 73-thousand dollars on the car.
In 2011, the Center Stage project filed for bankruptcy.
The project claimed $64 Million in total liabilities, of which 43 Million was from player investments.
Was Jeff Rubin a scammer or was he just bad at picking investments?
Rubin Gets Away With It Normally, a story like Rubin's ends by pleading
guilty to a charge such as Money Laundering or Wire Fraud.
However, no criminal charges have even been filed against Rubin for anything to do with
the Casino.
However, in 2015, The Securities and Exchange Commission did charge Rubin with defrauding
his NFL clientele of around 40-millions dollars.
Rubin eventually settled the dispute, agreeing to pay $250,000 in penalties.
He was also permanently barred from the investment and securities industry.
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