QB Says He’s Not Liable for Bogus $1.9M Loan

(CN) – NFL quarterback Vince Young claims in court that his former financial adviser and sports agent fraudulently took out a nearly $1.9 million loan in his name from a predatory lender.

Young is suing the lender, Pro Player Loan, in New York County Supreme Court in an effort to get the lender off his back.

“Young has never received a penny from the purported Pro Player ‘loan’ proceeds, nor has he ever communicated with anyone from Pro Player or knowingly executed any loan agreements with Pro Player,” the lawsuit states.

Young says the loan was fraudulently obtained by his former financial adviser, Ronnie Peoples, and his former agent, Major Adams II, neither of whom are defendants in the lawsuit.

Young says he gave Peoples and his company, Peoples Financial Services, power of attorney to act on his behalf financially.

Peoples and Adams allegedly took out a nearly $1.9 million from Pro Player Funding, which the lawsuit describes as “a predatory lender with a history of loaning funds to football players on extraordinarily onerous terms.”

Under the terms of the loan, Pro Player disbursed just 59 percent of the total loan amount after prepaid interest and fees, and demanded 30 percent interest when the loan went into default in June, according to the lawsuit.

Despite Young’s insistence that he never took out the loan, “Pro Player has subjected Young — and his former football team, the Buffalo Bills — to a barrage of threats and excessive and needless discovery requests in an effort to enforce its judgment.”

He says the lender even tried to serve him with papers at the Buffalo Bills’ training camp in early August.

Pro Player allegedly won a judgment by confession in July, requiring Young to pay $1.69 million in outstanding principal plus 9 percent interest until the judgment has been paid in full.

Young claims Peoples and Adams have misappropriated a total of $5.5 million “through a brazen scheme to secure loans using Young’s identity to satisfy their own personal debts and otherwise line their own pockets.”

Peoples and Adams “resorted to a myriad of deceptive practices: impersonating Young in order to secure bogus loans in his name; forging Young’s signature on financial documents; and using fake e-mail addresses in Young’s name that Young neither authorized or of which he was even aware,” the lawsuit states.

The pro quarterback says he found out about the scheme last August, after he hired a new asset manager, KM Capital Management, to sort out his finances.

Young claims he immediately fired Adams and Peoples, and signed a mutual release absolving him of his personal guarantee of $1.9 in loans from Peoples Financial Services to Adams, and $500,000 in loans from the company to Young’s uncle Keith Young.

The athlete wants the court to vacate the judgment, claiming Pro Player failed to take “reasonable steps to ensure that Young was aware of the transaction, that he authorized it, or that he would benefit from it.”

“Indeed, the circumstances of this loan should have given rise to grave suspicions on the part of Pro Player as to whether the transaction was legitimate,” Young claims. “Pro Player, however, turned a blind eye to those circumstances, motivated by its rapacious desire to earn the exorbitant profits on the loan.”

Young was released from the Buffalo Bills on Aug. 27 and is now a free agent.

His attorney is Thomas Dewey of Dewey Pegno & Kramarsky in Manhattan.

Copy of the suit below…

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4closureFraud.org

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VINCENT YOUNG vs PRO PLAYER FUNDING LLC