Football Player Contemplated Killing Financial Adviser

Hey monkeys, just read this article about a football player's lost fortune and thoughts about killing his financial adviser. Below are the key quotes from the article.

Fortune pilfered, Clinton Portis contemplated revenge under the veil of darkness. On a handful of late nights and early mornings in 2013 he lurked in his car near a Washington, D.C.–area office building, pistol at his side, and waited for one of several men who had managed a large chunk of the $43.1 million he earned with his 2,230 carries over nine NFL seasons. Purportedly safe investments had suspiciously soured, and almost all the money Portis set aside to fund his future had evaporated. That future included a mother who doubles as his hero and four sons scattered across the Southeast. Their comfort and security. Their happiness.

This just shows the magnitude of Portis' lost money.
Simultaneously, Brahmbhatt steered Portis and other NFL players to invest with Success Trade Securities, overseen by his former Stratton Oakmont colleague Fuad Ahmed, whose Ponzi scheme would unravel in 2013. Nearly $14 million of those investments vanished. STS was ordered to repay the losses, and Brahmbhatt and Ahmed were eventually barred from securities trading by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. (Ahmed’s lawyer did not comment; Brahmbhatt’s rep says his client was also deceived by Ahmed, and while Brahmbhatt frequently conferred with Portis, they held no official advisory agreement.)

It is evident that Portis lost his money due to the illegal activities of his advisers, which is a shame.
Even if the money had disappeared, she told him, the people who truly loved him wouldn’t. She begged him to turn his car around and go home to his mother in Gainesville, visit loved ones in Charlotte, see some friends in Miami. If he didn’t, his four boys would know him not as a charismatic former-NFL-star-turned-carpool-driver but as the man on the other side of a glass prison partition.
“You’ve already lost,” his friend told him, “but the loss you would sustain [by killing someone] would be greater.”

This excerpt shows how money is important, but it is not the most important thing: family is.
Heeding his friend’s advice, Portis left his pistol in her care while he grappled with his anger; she kept it until she was certain he wouldn’t pull the trigger. Over the ensuing months Portis sequestered himself with family, and his most frightening impulses had abated by the time he filed for bankruptcy in late 2015, triggering a rash of media coverage that called attention to the details of his plight: $412,000 in domestic support owed to four women; $390,000 due to the IRS; more than $287,000 owed to the MGM Grand casino; another $170,000 to the Borgata; only $150 remaining in his bank account. Lavish homes in Virginia and Florida were sold at a loss. A condo in Miami was liquidated. (Though Portis’s debts were officially discharged in July ’16, the Borgata’s parent company has contested its portion. A hearing is scheduled for this fall.)
Perhaps most painful were the headlines seizing on the $500,000 Portis owed his own mother. He had paid cash for her house in Gainesville, valued at roughly $900,000, but he says one of his financial advisers took a loan out against it in his name without his knowledge—which left Hearn-Pearson as one of her son’s largest creditors. The stories claiming Portis owed his mother a half-million dollars missed the mark. “I owe my mom everything,” he says. “Everything.”

He acknowledges that no one forced him to hand over his millions to strangers in hopes of speedy returns.

I believe that it is sad that he lost most of his fortune. As Portis noted, he is also to blame to his financial distress. I believe that he made the right decision to not kill those people and that it is important to be a father to his children.
If someone lost a majority of your hypothetical $43 million, what would you do? Do you think Portis will financially recover?
 
Best Response

the sad thing is jeff rubin was a NFLPA licensed FA.

morals of the story:

  1. if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

  2. work with a big firm. they have big compliance departments and plenty of insurance to cover you in case someone does successfully pull some shit like this

  3. it's fine to trust someone with your money, but it's still your money, pay attention to it

  4. boring investments are the best investments, you shouldn't open a nightclub in miami, you shouldn't invest in O&G in some place in Canada you've never heard of, you shouldn't buy penny stocks, you shouldn't do PE unless it's a fund placed by a big shop (where it's been vetted), you shouldn't invest in something you don't understand.

 

While Portis is responsible to an minimum keep an eye on his money and what his FA does he is still 95% responsible for his plight.

He obviously had a gambling problem owing $287K to the MGM Grand and another $170K to the Borgata.

Then $412K to (4) women for domestic support? WTF!?!? Is Shawn Kemp and Dwight Howard his mentors!?!?

Pro sports needs more folks who have taken the LeBron James approach.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
 

How can you blame them. I think we as financial professionals are in a bubble cause working in finance, in any aspect, means you generally have the financial IQ of your average 45-50 year old. For anyone else these products get complicated, do you think a safe ETF is fine? Well how about the derivatives and futures that have to be bought and sold by the fund to achieve the "par" returns? What about the eating away of the NAV which become more pronounced when a market is trading side ways.

My tips when it comes to financial advisors is pick the most boring or milquetoast person. Pick the smart quiet guy, not The Rock from HBO's "Ballers". Now this is the rule, there are exceptions.

I really think that if the NFL doesn't already they should invest like a pension fund, pool all that money into safe investments. These guys are not financially savvy, not implying they are dumb but they have devoted all their energy into 1 specific field at the cost of all other areas.

 

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