Katz’s story also quoted from a deposition from Tyson’s King-appointed accountant, Mohammad Khan, reporting that Tyson had no liquid assets left. Kahn had testified that Tyson had borrowed against the $2 million life insurance annuity that Cayton and Jacobs had set up for him, in order to pay his legal bills.
(Tyson had to pay Vince Fuller about $5 million, and was starting to get bills from Alan Dershowitz, his appellate lawyer, when Maffia’s affidavit was submitted.)
The Katz story also summarized the affidavit’s revelation that Tyson was charged for a $2 million fee King paid to Razor Ruddock’s promoter, Murad Muhammad, in exchange for which King received future promotional rights to Ruddock.
The story also cited King’s gambit of billing Tyson for King’s inflated purses to fighters on Tyson undercards who were managed by Carl King, naming specifically Julian Jackson and Azumah Nelson. Tyson also paid for Simon Brown’s purse at a time King was trying to get Brown to sign a long-term contract with him.
Maffia’s affidavit also disclosed:
After the first Tyson–Ruddock fight, Don King told me that he had received a letter from Vincent Fuller [counsel of record for Mike Tyson in this litigation] in which Fuller stated that, due to improper deductions, Tyson had not received his fair share of revenue from the fight. According to King, the letter also stated that King was exploiting Tyson financially in other areas and had hired King controlled “puppets” to represent Tyson in various financial matters relating to King.
King expressed outrage that Fuller, who he had chosen as Tyson’s attorney, would make a claim against King’s own interest. He then spoke to Fuller by phone in my presence, and told Fuller “You can’t do this to me,” and demanded that Fuller retract that letter. Immediately after this telephone conversation ended, King told me that Fuller was “just covering his ass,” and said that Fuller had agreed to retract the letter.
The Maffia affidavit recounted (in a section Katz had room to mention only briefly):
On several occasions, Don King advised me that Mike Tyson was a “50-50” partner in all business conducted by DKP. As the controller of DKP, I had physical possession of the corporate record book which included the corporate stock transfer ledger. I am unaware of any stock being issued to Mike Tyson, or any income from non-Tyson fights being paid to Tyson, but it is possible that such payments were made. I do know that Tyson bore many DKP expenses.
Tyson paid substantial legal fees and disbursements to finance DKP’s litigation against Buster Douglas.
Among expenses charged to Mike Tyson after Tyson received his purses were: all of the travel expenses incurred by Don King and his travel companions whenever King was traveling to or from meetings with Mike Tyson; the cost of security personnel for Don King as well as the salaries of several other DKP employees; two-thirds the cost of several automobiles owned by DKP; the partial cost of the construction renovations at DKP corporate headquarters in New York, and house owned by DKP in Las Vegas.
One section of the affidavit actually dealt with the Cayton–Tyson litigation and was supportive of Cayton’s claims. It said:
I believe that there were numerous instances where expenses reported to Cayton were overstated and the amount overstated was shared between DKP and Mike Tyson.
For example, for several Tyson fights, a ten percent “trainer’s fee” was deducted from the total income reported to Cayton. [Cayton was due 20 percent of Tyson’s purses as his manager till February 1992.] However, that fee was never paid in full. Tyson’s trainers received only a small percentage of that amount, and the unpaid portion was divided between Tyson and DKP.
The June 16, 1990, Tyson–Tillman fight was typical of this arrangement. With regard to that bout, trainer’s fees in excess of $460,000 were reported to Cayton. But in reality, Aaron Snowell, Jay Bright, and Richie Giachetti were paid a total of $150,000. This resulted in roughly $300,000 in income to Tyson above that which was reported to Cayton, and Tyson gave DKP half of that amount.
In other words, had Cayton been paid a 20 percent managerial share, the $300,000 would have been divided $240,000 to Tyson and $60,000 to Cayton. Instead, it was divided $10,000 to Tyson and $150,000 to DKP.
The next day the other New York tabloids picked up the story, and a day later, the New York Times ran a story. The Times story quoted King’s press spokesman John Solberg as saying, “I’m not going to dignify these charges. There’s nothing to comment on. It sounds like a disgruntled ex-employee.”
But disdainful spin control could not smother this story. By Tuesday, papers all over the world were picking it up. Maffia got calls from London newspapers and an invitation to be a guest on NBC’s Today show, and dozens of messages from radio call-in shows as far away as California. He turned down every request. King did give a series of interviews to boxing writers, but he had no answers. Wally Matthews wrote in Newsday:
While there was plenty of fire in King’s 30-minute telephone diatribe, it was largely a smokescreen. The promoter refused to provide specific answers to troubling questions about the condition of Tyson’s finances…. When asked specifically about the charges, King retreated to the ropes.
“It ain’t about no deductions,” he said. “I would rather not say anything other than what’s in the release.”
King’s office had put out a press release saying the affidavit was “filled with lies, fabrications, and half-truths about me, my business, and my family.”
On May 7, Katz published a follow-up column on King. He wrote:
Used to be, I could tolerate King. There was a joie de vivre, and an energy level there, despite the old scandals, like the ABC tournament in 1977. But he has grown more than tiresome. He has grown mean.
He is boxing’s Citizen Kane. He wants love. He campaigned hard for several years to get the Boxing Writers’ Association to honor him with the James Walker Award for “long and meritorious service.” He was worse than rebuffed.
Obviously the boxing writers are read by the boxing fans because there is not an arena in this country where his introduction does not cause widespread booing.
He has long wanted his picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek as a black entrepreneur who made it. I’m sure that a lot of white businessmen who have been so honored are no more moral or ethical than King. But that does not give King any license.
Many years ago, the late Jimmy Cannon wrote of Joe Louis,
“He’s a credit to his race—the human race.” King is a discredit to his race. Our race.
The next week Maffia and Hauser released two more affidavits. One was leaked to me at the New York Post and the other to Jerry Izenberg at the Newark Star Ledger. Together, they disclosed:”
• In 1990, Don King charged Mike Tyson two thirds of his own legal bills of $1.3 million from the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. The firm represented King in his lawsuit against Buster Douglas, but did no work for Tyson during 1990. The firm won a $4 million civil settlement, but King did not share this with Tyson. Tyson paid the bills, and King kept the spoils.
• Tyson overpaid Jose Sulaiman’s WBC $209,000 in sanctioning fees for his title fights against Frank Bruno, Carl Williams, and Buster Douglas.
• King directed that Tyson pay the WBC a $100,000 sanctioning fee for his 1991 fight with Razor Ruddock, even though the match required no sanctioning fee because it was not for any WBC championship.
• King billed Tyson for the cost of maintaining a corporate apartment rented by DKP at 420 East Fifty-fourth Street in Manhattan, a house owned by DKP at 968 Pinehurst Road in Las Vegas, and a duplex apartment rented by DKP at 19590 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
•Among the bills Tyson paid was one for maid service on all three DKP apartments, $3,595 monthly rent on the New York apartment, cable TV charges for all three apartments, $5,295 for installing a new phone system in King’s Las Vegas home, and swimming-pool maintenance and neighborhood association dues for the Las Vegas corporate apartment.
• Carl Kin
g illegally took 50 percent of the earnings of boxers he managed, and false declarations were filed with the Nevada State Athletic Commission by Don King on the amount he paid his fighters. Nevada rules stipulate that a manager cannot deduct more than a 33 percent share of a boxer’s earnings.
Maffia swore that Carl’s company—Monarch Boxing—“was financed and controlled by Don King, and the bulk of the money received by Monarch was paid in turn to Don King Productions as a ‘loan repayment.’”
For years fighters like Tim Witherspoon, David Bey, and Saoul Mamby had complained that Carl King improperly took 50 percent of their earnings.
All three Maffia affidavits were sent by Hauser to federal and state prosecutors in Manhattan, and to the state boxing commissions of Nevada and New Jersey.
But the first official government response came from John Ryan of the Internal Revenue Service. He read Katz’s story in the News and called Maffia, and then Hauser. A meeting was arranged at the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. Present at this first meeting were FBI agent Warren Flagg, IRS agent John Ryan, federal prosecutor Sarah Chapman, and her supervisor, David Lawrence, who would soon depart the office and leave the case to Chapman.
During this first meeting Hauser and Maffia both said it was within King’s character to shred documents and destroy evidence as soon as he learned there was a new federal investigation brewing.
It was in this first meeting that Maffia mentioned the possibility that King had defrauded Lloyd’s of London, the clearinghouse for insurance underwriting syndicates. Maffia was fairly certain that King had submitted a false contingency insurance claim for the postponed fight between Tyson and Alex Stewart in 1990, and thought he might have repeated the scam after the canceled fight between Julio Cesar Chavez and Harold Brazier in June 1991.
King purchased contingency insurance to cover expenses in case a fight is canceled. On the Tyson–Stewart fight, Maffia believed a $400,000 claim was paid to DKP, and that $200,000 in checks had been made out to Tyson, and that none of these checks was actually endorsed by Tyson. On the Chavez–Brazier fight, Maffia remembered that he had sent a fax to the Gagliardi Brothers Insurance Company of San Jose, California, in July 1991, containing official notification of the cancellation, and sending the official report from the Nevada boxing commission doctor saying Chavez had injured his nose in training seven days before the fight.
The fax to the broker also said that receipts to support a claim were being compiled.
Maffia had no knowledge of what happened after he left DKP, but thought it was likely a false claim was also paid on this fight.
The meeting convinced the feds that they had to act fast, and that Maffia was a credible witness.
Under pressure from Maffia’s affidavits, Don King had a paranoid episode on Friday, May 8.
David Branson, Cayton’s attorney, sent a process server to King’s home on East Sixty-second Street to hand him a subpoena to give a deposition in the civil suit filed by Cayton against Tyson. A deposition in a civil suit is usually as routine as combing his hair for King.
But on this Friday evening, at about 8:45, King started to act irrationally. He called the police of the 19th Precinct and said an assassination squad was outside his home trying to kill him with machine guns. He called his friend the Reverend Al Sharpton to come to his house immediately to help protect him from the assassins.
King also called UPI boxing writer Dave Raffo.
“They’ve come to kill me,” King said. “They’ve broken the security cameras outside my house. It’s just like Rodney King. When they want to kill the black man, everyone looks the other way.”
Raffo said, “King sounded scared and desperate,” as he rambled on.
“There’s three of them,” King said. “One of them has a suitcase with a change of clothes for a getaway. They’ve been sent by Seth Abraham, Michael Fuchs, Bill Cayton, and Jose Torres.”
Raffo then called the police at the 119th Precinct and could not confirm what King was telling him.
Meanwhile, King called Flo Kennedy of the New York Post.
“There’s three men and a woman outside my house trying to assassinate me,” King said. “They’re dressed in combat fatigues. There’s a conspiracy to destroy Don King and kill Mike Tyson.” He kept Kennedy on the phone for an hour.
King also called ESPN television reporter Chris Myers with the same story of an assassination attempt in progress against him.
“He sounded real scared,” Myers said the next day.
When the police arrived at King’s townhouse they found only the process server and a lawyer, Dean Purchick, who was affiliated with Branson’s law firm. The cops called Branson in Maryland, and Branson confirmed he had authorized the serving of papers for a civil deposition.
The cautious police then frisked the process server and searched his car for concealed weapons. They even called his wife to confirm his identity.
Finally, at about 1:15 A.M., the process server was allowed into King’s home and handed him the subpoena while cops from the 19th Precinct served as witnesses and peacekeepers.
The next morning, King and Reverend Sharpton spoke at a rally in Harlem, at a school on West 135th Street. King repeated his story that a team of professional assassins had come to his home the night before to kill him. “Me and Mike Tyson are targets for murder,” King said.
As is sometimes his style, Reverend Sharpton was trying to please both sides in the conflict. The same day he appeared at King’s side at the Harlem rally, Sharpton gave me a quote that I published in the New York Post. He said: “Joe Maffia is a guy with total integrity and sincerity. He has credibility with me. These charges are very serious because they come from Joe.”
Sharpton also left this message on Maffia’s answering machine: “We both know what Don does. I’m in your corner.”
(In December 1994, Sharpton visited Tyson in prison and gave him copies of Maffia’s affidavits. Sharpton told me that Tyson had never read them before, and that he encouraged Tyson to be “an independent” when he emerged from prison and resumed his boxing career—advice Tyson failed to take.)
The day after King’s assassination hallucination, I reached Eddie Burns, the press spokesman for the New York City Police Department. He told me, “This is all a hype by Don King. It never happened. Nobody attempted to harm King. King’s PR guy is hyping the press. This is a hoax.”
On Thursday, May 14—eleven days after Katz’s first story—two FBI agents arrived at King’s corporate office on East sixty-ninth Street with subpoenas for financial records, computer discs, and the grand jury testimony of several DKP employees. The subpoena was drawn to cover all the insurance claim documents, contracts, bank records, and invoices involving Lloyd’s of London that Maffia had targeted.
King retaliated swiftly. He sued Maffia for the unpaid portion of his $25,000 loan to buy his apartment—about $16,000. King also filed a formal complaint with the state Board of Regents, accusing Maffia of professional misconduct and challenging his license as a certified public accountant.
It would take a year before Maffia got a letter exonerating him from all of King’s false allegations and affirming that his CPA’s license was secure. After he received this letter, Maffia signed an immunity agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Late in 1994, during our last interview, Maffia said to me, “At times I regret what I did, but in the end, I would still do it the same way again. I got nothing out of this. I received no monetary gain. I made some enemies. Don tried to hurt me in different ways. I got some strange phone calls.
“I think Don was shocked by what I did. I think he underestimated me because I’m so quiet. He underestimated my resolve. I always spoke softly and slowly to him, and he might have interpreted that as weakness. He is so bombastic he thinks calmness is weakness. Don’s problem is that he stopped listening to other people. He performs, but doesn’t communicate. He didn’t know me, that I just do things
honestly.”
The federal investigation went on for two years and two months. John Ryan of the IRS, who started it, retired. Sarah Chapman got married. Mary Jo White was appointed to be the new U.S. attorney.
Maffia’s information about an insurance fraud on the Tyson– Stewart fight was supported by all the documentation. But Tyson told two FBI agents who interviewed him in prison that he would not testify against King, that he was afraid of being vulnerable to reprisals in prison for being “a rat.”
But the documentation was assembled for the fraud on the Chavez–Brazier fight—contracts, canceled checks, ledger entries, correspondence, and the sworn proof of loss. Moreover, current and past employees of DKP testified in the grand jury about the documents and office conversations about their preparation.
Meanwhile, the methodical prosecutors felt no rush to indict, and King began to stall the investigation. It took months for the FBI to get a court-ordered handwriting sample from King under oath. King’s lawyer, Bob Hirth, briefly became a target of the investigation (although he was never charged with any wrongdoing), and he had to hire his own attorney, Steve Kaufman, to represent him. King then hired Peter Fleming as his new lawyer, one of the best, who had won an acquittal for John Mitchell in 1974.
The British executives of Lloyd’s and the underwriting syndicate cooperated totally, through their New York attorney, Donald Cayea. The British syndicate turned over every document in their files relevant to King’s insurance claims, including faxes, contracts, invoices, wire transfers, correspondence with brokers and claims adjusters.
The Life and Crimes of Don King: The Shame of Boxing in America Page 34
