Finally Free (22 page)

I was only twenty-four at the time of the big contract, just six years out of high school. The money made me an easy target for family and friends looking for helpful handouts, and there was
plenty to go around. In my heart, I wanted to help them, but I realize it became excessive.

You have to remember that we grew up with next to nothing. When I think about my past, my upbringing, living in public housing, and how hard my mom and dad worked to make ends meet, my main objective was to bless them as much as I could. I wanted to let them enjoy life. I wanted to let them have a chance to catch their breath.

Yes, I would say I did too much for too many people. I spoiled them. However, a lot of my friends did come to me with business ideas. They had a lot of bright ideas, but I just wasn't mature and ready for them.

It was partly my fault, because I would much rather just give them money than let them go out and take the necessary steps to start a promising business venture on their own—mainly because it was going to cost more money to invest in the types of projects they wanted to do, including paying salaries. Plus, I was scared of them not succeeding.

Sometimes I look at my imprisonment and bankruptcy from a spiritual perspective. As I've said previously, I believe God wanted to lovingly but firmly get me on course for a more successful life. I think it was just God's way of saying, “You're doing it all wrong, son.”

It was like He was saying, “I love you too much to see you end your career and end up broke. I love you too much to have you go
out in the wee hours of the night in one of these dogfights and get shot. I love you too much for you not to carry out My plan. There's so much more for you down the road that you can't see. You don't know, but I know.”

My finances became so tight when I was in prison that I had to reach out to three former NFL teammates for loans. They knew the type of person I truly was, and they knew I was in a situation I had to bounce back from. It wasn't like I was asking for $100,000 or anything like that. It was just enough to get by—enough to get me home and get me through the bankruptcy.

Not only did teammates help me financially, but they helped me emotionally as well.

Joe Horn, who previously played for Falcons' rival New Orleans before joining Atlanta in 2007, called me frequently to offer encouragement and support. He was calling me every day during my case, saying, “I'm here for you. I'll be here for you. I'll support you. You can get through it.” And he helped me through.

My finances dwindled away in prison to the point that my debts were bigger than my assets. One major reason for this was the access I gave others to my investments and money while incarcerated.

I never spent all the money I had earned in my career. I admit that I spent a lot, but I had a lot. The amount that went out was nowhere near the amount that came in.

Much of my money was tied up in real estate, and I had asked
my financial advisor at the time to sell it, but he would not liquidate the property because of the recessed market and because he had his own money tied up in it. I had more than $6.5 million invested in real estate. But he wouldn't sell. It's as though he never even cared about the fact I needed that money to help settle some financial issues.

When you're in a situation where you need a helping hand and you need people to be there for you—people you can rely on and trust—the true person comes out. Those types of situations show you a different side of those around you, because you're down and your back is against the wall, and you need them the most. You learn that sometimes people don't care about you as much when you don't have anything to offer. It wasn't just my financial advisors. I also allowed family and friends access to my money, and their spending contributed to my demise too.

If you go out and mismanage your money and you place it in bad investments, but you do it yourself, then you only have yourself to blame when you take a loss. I'd rather not blame someone else for how they managed my money, because in reality, it was ultimately my responsibility.

Not everything was as bad as it looked, though.

There were some things that emerged in bankruptcy court filings that were very misleading, including a $1,000 check from me to my mother that had “chump change” written on the memo line. It's not like it sounds. Our family did not take money for granted. My mom wrote that on the check, not me. (She would write checks, and I'd approve them or sign them.) She wasn't trying
to be arrogant or anything like that; it was just her way of being humorous. And she thought,
Who else is going to see it?
Nobody would have ever known if the documents had not been revealed in the bankruptcy case.

Based on the bankruptcy documents I had to file, there were also media reports saying I purchased a Mercedes Benz worth more than $90,000 on the day I turned myself in to prison. I did buy the car, but the timing of the purchase was reported incorrectly. It was totally false.

Why would I go buy a car the day I'm going to prison—one of the saddest days of my life? Material things don't bring you joy, and that certainly wasn't going to help my emotions at that time. I bought the Mercedes about three weeks earlier, downsizing from a 2007 Bentley Flying Spur that originally cost nearly twice as much ($160,000). I realize that may not seem like “downsizing,” especially with the way things were with the economy, but given my income, it was downsizing for me.

Looking back, it's easy to see how someone could have inferred that my family and I were living and spending excessively. We didn't try to hide it. In the fall of 2006, I appeared on the cover of
Celebrity car
magazine's celebrity automobiles issue. In the article, I proudly proclaimed that I had the Flying Spur, a Bentley Coupe, a Benz, and a 2006 Navigator. I also pointed out that my mother had more cars than I did, including a Cadillac XLR convertible. Later on, after my legal troubles began, we needed to get rid of many of our assets. It was difficult, but I knew if I could play football again, I might be able to earn some of it back.

Having to get rid of assets was somewhat ironic because my mom was wanting to downsize her house anyway. These circumstances gave her the opportunity to do that and move into the house I was living in. Meanwhile, my son's mom moved out of the house she was living in because she wanted to live closer to Mitez's school. I also owned two boats—one in Miami and one in Virginia. I wasn't going back to Miami anytime soon because I had sold my condo down there. So I got rid of the boats because I wasn't going to use them. Those were my assets.

The whole process changed my ways and habits regarding cars especially. I used to drive them only a few months before trading them in, but then I gained some perspective on things, like the sales tax you have to pay on each car. Now, I am practicing greater moderation with cars and driving them much longer.

I guess when the story came out, everyone looked at it like my family and I really didn't care about money and didn't respect the situation we were in. It wasn't that way at all. We were grateful and thankful for everything we had. My mom always told me to be grateful each and every day. My grandmother told me that too. It was just a bad situation.

Despite all of my financial immaturity and mistakes, I believe bankruptcy could've been avoided if certain people overseeing my assets had done some of the things I asked, like liquidating some of my real estate investments in order to pay off debts. If I
could start over, I would put all my money in the bank so I would know where it was. If I wanted to invest my money in something, I would have it in CDs, mutual funds, and maybe in real estate. This way, if I had to take a loss, I would take it based on
my
decisions and what
I
did—not because of someone else's decision.

Promising young athletes entering the NFL and other pro sports need to be mindful that there are “sharks” trying to take advantage of them and their money. The bottom line for me, given what I know now, is for the player to take a hands-on approach with his finances. Don't pay a financial advisor to hold your money. The bank will pay you to hold your money—it's called interest. So, your money is safe and making money, and it's not a high risk.

However, I've had some advisors that I still like and trust. One advisor really had my best interests at heart. He did a great job because all my money was accounted for. But you should never give anyone full access to your funds like I did. This advisor knew that other advisors and various people were talking to me, but he ended the relationship because he said that I refused to listen to his advice. I admit that I had a lot of people in my ear, and eventually I parted ways with the man.

I put a lot of trust in another financial advisor I had. I don't know enough to say for certain whether all of what he did was right or wrong. What I can say is this: I felt like he abandoned me when I needed his help the most. Things he did concerned me based on what I discovered through the bankruptcy process. He had my money invested in three different real estate projects—which
included a lot of property, a lot of land, and two restaurants in Atlanta. There was money that never really was totally accounted for.

I wrote him several letters—stern letters—demanding that he turn over my money to a certain individual, that he liquidate all the assets and liquidate the investments. I knew I was going to take a loss, but having something was better than having nothing in terms of a judgment I needed to pay off. I just wanted to show people my honest desire to fulfill my obligation to pay back the money I borrowed from them.

Through it all, this financial advisor never came to see me in Leavenworth, never got on my visitors' list, never came out to ask what I needed or what he or his firm could do. He knew everything that was going on. But he never made the effort to come see me or contact me to talk about my financial situation. I should have been given all the information regarding what was going on. And I wasn't.

The fact that he never came to Kansas to see me hurt me more than anything else. I put an enormous amount of trust in him. He had received at least $7 million in cash from me, maybe even more than that. I never saw it again or even heard about what happened to that money until I went through bankruptcy.

I met this advisor back in January of 2005 through someone I feel very close to and still love—someone I had a lot of trust in and still have a lot of trust in to this day. I don't want to reveal that person's name, but because of that friend, I placed my trust in this
financial advisor and believed he would have my best interests at heart. But in the end, that may or may not have been the case.

My relationship with him was great until I went to prison. That's when things changed. Leading up to prison, things kind of got out of whack when I started making certain demands for lump sums of my money, and the decisions I was making were being questioned. But I was doing it in my own best interest.

Before prison, this advisor and I met about once a month, and he would send me monthly financial reports. It's why I was so surprised that he acted the way he did and didn't communicate with me when I went to prison. To this day, I wonder what the reason was behind it. I haven't gotten an explanation for it. But I know now that he may have been leery of another person working with me—another financial advisor who was later sent to prison.