FINRA Investor Education Foundation and NFL Player Join Forces To Protect Pro Football Players from Investment Fraud

In an effort to help incoming National Football League members from getting their careers started on solid financial ground, the NFL and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation are working with each other to help educate players and their families about investment fraud. The joint efforts come in the wake of professional players finding themselves the target of financial scams.

At events held during the East/West Shrine Game in Florida last month, the NFL and FINRA Foundation planed to reach participants through video presentation and other resources regarding:

• Selecting the right financial professionals • Checking these represenatives’ backgrounds • Becoming educated about debt.

The FINRA Foundation’x Outsmarting Investment Fraud (OIF) curriculum informs players and their parents about the psychological tactics fraudsters have been known to use to get people to make choices based on their emotions rather than logic. This curriculum has been demonstrated to lower susceptibility to financial fraud by up to 50%.

It isn’t just new NFL football players that have been targeted by financial scammers. Earlier this month, a Texas couple pleaded no contest to establishing a bogus international investing firm and bilking ex-NFL player TJ Slaughter and others of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Slaughter, who formerly played for the New England Patriots and other NFL teams, said that he was defrauded of $150,000.

Mary Alice Monteza and Alan Keith Nelson told Slaughter that their company, Castro International, only worked with rich investors and concentrated on high-yield overseas investments. Slaughter says they started avoiding him after he gave them the cash and that he began to suspect that he’d been scammed when they told him five months later that his investment of $150,000 was now worth $7.6 million but refused to give him his initial outlay.

Nelson and Monteza were accused of running a Ponzi scam. The initial charges of securities fraud and three theft counts of theft were reduced to one count of theft after the couple reached a plea deal with prosecutors.

Another ex-NFL player, Kendrell Bell, has said it was his University of Georgia college football coach that bilked him of $2M. The former Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker contends that Jim Donnan persuaded him to put his money in liquidation company GLC Limited when in fact the football coach was running a scam.

GLC has since filed for bankruptcy. The company claims that Donnan made improper gains from running an alleged $70 million Ponzi scam.

No one should be targeted for investment fraud-it doesn’t matter if you are a millionaire and the person scams you thinks you can afford it. At Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas, LTD, LLP, our stockbroker fraud lawyers represent individual and institutional investors in recovering their losses.

FINRA Foundation and NFL Player Engagement Team Up to Assist Players Avoid Investment Fraud, Make Smart Financial Decisions, FINRA, January 27, 2012
Former NFL player Kendrell Bell says ex-UGA coach duped him, Sports Illustrated, January 27, 2012
Couple admit to scamming football pro, others, My San Antonio, January 9, 2012

More Blog Posts:
FINRA Tells Financial Firms to Heighten Supervision of Complex Products, Stockbroker Fraud Blog, February 2, 2012
SIFMA Wants FINRA to Take Tougher Actions Against Brokers that Don’t Repay Promissory Notes, Institutional Investor Securities Blog, January 17, 2012
Oppenheimer & Co. Must Buyback $6M in Auction-Rate Securities from Investor, Says FINRA Arbitration Panel, Institutional Investor Securities Blog, January 11, 2012