Dothan’s bingo mess not so charitable for T.O. — new interview in GQ
Former NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens (aka T.O.) is still blaming a bad investment in Dothan’s Country Crossing for helping him go broke. In a revealing interview published today on GQ.com, the NFL’s poster child for accept-no-responsibility antics talks about his life post-football at the age of 38 with a surgically-repaired knee and his rapidly-declining fortune. Here’s the excerpt of the excellent full article by GQ’s Nancy Hass which highlights the Country Crossing mess:
The problem, he [T.O.] says, is that he’s by nature too trusting, loyal to a fault, despite everyone’s carping that he’s selfish. It’s the sad old stereotypical song of the up-from-nothing black athlete: He let other people take care of things. He says his financial advisers (informally recommended by Rosenhaus) put him in a series of risky, highly leveraged ventures that he didn’t discover until autumn 2010, when he finally demanded a full accounting. And of course there were the houses and condos, which he had always figured he could rent out; they became dead weight when the real estate market collapsed in 2008. Individually they weren’t terribly lavish, but together the mortgage nut is reportedly almost $750,000 a year. The Atlanta house is on the market; the south Jersey place he paid $3.9 million for was sold for $1.7 million in late 2010. Most egregious of all was the ill-fated Alabama entertainment complex (with an electronic-bingo component) that cost him $2 million. He invested, he says, at the suggestion of his advisers and a lawyer they steered him to, Pamela Linden. The venture turned out to be illegal in the state, not to mention a violation of the NFL’s policy prohibiting players from investing in gambling. Owens is suing Linden, as is Clinton Portis, the former Redskins running back who also invested. (Several other players and the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. also got sucked into the venture.)
“I hate myself for letting this happen,” he says. “I believed that they had my back when they said, ‘You take care of the football, and we’ll do the rest.’ And in the end, they just basically stole from me.”
A spokesman for Linden would say only that “we did not represent the athletes on this specific investment.” The financial adviser, Jeff Rubin, declined to comment. (Rubin appears to have shut down his firm, Fort Lauderdale–based Pro Sports, a few months ago. In September, he was arrested on drug charges in connection with the alleged rape of a female employee.)
Read the full article by Nancy Hass at GQ.com.
