Michael Vick was once the National Football League’s highest-paid player and he spent like it.
One of his friends tools around in a US$31,000 Cadillac DTS. His former personal assistant steers a US$45,000 Infiniti M45 and has a pair of power boats. His brother Marcus has a US$62,000 Land Rover and his sister a Yukon Denali.
But Vick himself is busted, millions of dollars in debt and making US$0.12 an hour in his job at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he is serving a 23-month sentence on dogfighting charges.
PHOTO: AFP
With Vick due to plead on state charges next week, he was returned to Virginia on Thursday and the details of his bankruptcy filing were reviewed. The documents reveal astoundingly bad financial management of the quarterback’s fortune.
His salary from the Atlanta Falcons — US$11.4 million in 2006 and US$6 million last year — along with substantial income from endorsements allowed Vick to spread the wealth, paying mortgages and bills for family members and keeping them flush in spending money.
“Chump change,” Vick wrote on one US$1,000 check to his mother.
But his balance sheet is now grim. Vick claims assets of US$16 million and liabilities of US$20.4 million. He owes US$2.4 million to the Royal Bank of Canada and US$1.1 million to Wachovia Bank, both because of loan defaults, and US$4.5 million to a sports agent who sued him and won.
Meanwhile, his monthly bills are piling up — his mother Brenda Boddie’s US$4,700 mortgage; more than US$2,000 in car payments for her Cadillac XLR and Escalade; a US$2,500 mortgage for fiancee Kijafa Frink and their two children; US$1,160 for Frink’s Range Rover; a US$781 payment for his sister’s Yukon Denali; US$3,500 in monthly support for his young son and the boy’s mother.
Fortunately for Vick, the Land Rover he gave brother Marcus is paid in full. So is the US$65,000 Infiniti sport utility vehicle parked near Leavenworth for Frink’s use during her twice-monthly visits. Vick sold his Bentley for US$105,000 and used the money to buy a Mercedes-Benz.
His real estate holdings include the homes in Suffolk and Hampton counties in Virginia where his mother and fiancee live, respectively, and vacant houses in Williamsburg and Duluth, Georgia.
Construction continues on a US$2 million home in Suffolk where he and his fiancee plan to eventually live. Already sold is the house on 6 hectares in Surry County that served as headquarters for the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting operation.
Vick is scheduled to plead guilty to state dogfighting and animal cruelty charges on Tuesday in a deal that calls for a suspended sentence and probation. The plea could clear the way for his entry into a halfway house for the last few months of his federal sentence, before his expected release in July.
But he’ll still have to face a financial mess worsened by his entanglement in about 20 business ventures, from a rental car outlet to a liquor store. Vick plans to pay his creditors by returning to the NFL — a goal that hinges on his reinstatement by the league’s commissioner.
Scores of large withdrawals, debits, wire transfers and cashier’s checks — some for hundreds of thousands of dollars — were made from various accounts over the last couple of years. In most cases there’s no indication of how the money was spent, but Vick has admitted financing the dogfighting operation and giving betting money to his associates.
Those associates include three co-defendants who were also sentenced to prison for their roles in the dogfighting ring. Vick paid US$150,000 to each of their lawyers. As would be expected in such a high-profile case, the records also show millions of dollars for Vick’s defense and bankruptcy legal teams.
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