This post is in regards to former NFL football player Trent Richardson and how his “alleged” friends and family exploited him to the tune of 1.6 million dollars in just10 months.
The former No. 3 overall pick of the Cleveland Browns in 2012 told ESPN’s Shelley Smith on “E:60” that his family and friends spent $1.6 million of his money in a period between January 2015 and October in 2015.
During that time, Richardson was cut by the Indianapolis Colts and later by the Oakland Raiders. He discovered that people were using his name to open accounts with Netflix (11 of them) and Hulu (eight) and even order bottle service by dropping his name at clubs, even though Richardson doesn’t drink.
“I finally just looked at my bank statement, and I was just like, ‘Where did this come from? Where did that come from?’” Richardson said. “And my guy was sitting there telling me, ‘Man, we was telling you.’ I know he was telling me, but that’s just like telling a kid to stop running in the hall. They’re going to still do it when you turn your back or you leave.
“It’s just one of them moments to where I was just blinded by my heart, by loving everybody and thinking that everyone was for me. I know they love me. I know they do care. But at the time, they took advantage of it.”
Richardson signed a fully-guaranteed deal worth $20.5 million over four years with the Browns in July 2012. He told ESPN that he isn’t broke and can support his immediate family but has shaved off some major costs, such as removing his brother, Terrell, as Richardson’s $100,000-a-year personal assistant.
“He’s such a good guy,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “He’s such a good person, and he wants to please everyone. And I think sometimes when guys have that personality, which is a great personality to have, it makes it very difficult to disappoint anyone with the word ‘No.’” READ THE REST HERE
I would disagree with Trent that his friends and family love and care for him. I’m sure they do on some level but the bottom line is that they chose to serve themselves at his expense as opposed to looking out for his best interests and having his back. These were “friends” who saw a way to exploit Richardson’s new wealth and had an expectation that somehow they were entitled to some portion of it. It’s a sad revelation to discover one’s supposed friends are really not what you thought they were.
Regarding the inability to say “No” in order to please people, my belief is that it can be a kindness to others to tell them “No”. Saying “No” not only preserves our own boundaries and dignity but applies boundaries to the behavior of others so that you are not facilitating their continued use of bad strategies for dealing with life. Some people lack the internal strength to tell themselves “No” so by apply external restraint, we actually assist them in becoming better people. Being a doormat and letting everyone walk all over you is not a kindness to them at all.
I’m sorry. But a $100,000-a-year personal assistant? If his brother really needed a $100,000-a-year personal assistant, he would be earning enough money to pay for him/her himself. If he doesn’t have the money to pay for one, he doesn’t need one.
Actually, I think his brother was HIS personal assistant, and he was paying him 100K to do so. So he probably had access to his financial stuff, and perhaps took advantage, or let others do so?
It is sad so many young athletes, celebrities, etc. many who come from practically nothing, all of a sudden have all this money, and don’t know how to manage it, and get taken advantage of. I do know the NFL has a rookie transition program, which covers a lot of ground, including, I believe, financial info. But seems like more needs to be done; making them aware and making them be more involved in their own financial health.
Liz, you’re right about them needing to be aware and more involved. I keep going back to the fact that it was friends and family; how can you teach someone that people that they have known their entire lives may not be trustworthy? How could you get people to accept that? Would they even believe you? Would it seem as though you are trying to put a wedge between the players and their loved ones? I hate that Mr. Richardson had to experience his friends and family taking advantage of him, but is anyone every truly prepared to hear that they can’t trust people they’ve known their entire lives? I’m not sure I would be.
That is such a good point. It’s telling the person that they have to turn against everyone they’ve loved and trusted their whole lives. I’m sure that even if it’s for the best, it’s hard to turn your back on the people that are closest to you.
Eleven Netflix subscriptions lasting ten months don’t add up to over a million dollars. People must have been buying much, much bigger ticket items. I think there’s an expectation that a lot of sports stars have to live ridiculously luxurious lives, and when these kids (because they’re not more than kids when this happens to them) get thrown more money than they can imagine, people come crawling out of the woodwork expecting a piece of the pie and to be part of that luxurious image. It must be hard to be 22 or 23 years old and say no.
The bottle service at the clubs could well add up to thousands of dollars per occurrence, so that was one big contributor. It really is too bad that these young people don’t consider their futures and at least try to be responsible with their money.
Well, the Netflix accounts aren’t the only things that were opened in his name, and Netflix accounts with all the frills can start to add up (paying for the movie service on top of the basic plan, paying for additional devices that are allowed to stream simultaneously, etc.). But yeah, there were likely some other big ticket items the “friends” and family purchased on Richardson’s dime.
When I first heard this story, my husband and I discussed how all these young people signing multi-million dollar contracts need a neutral person, definitely not “friends” or family members, to help them track and manage expenses and can say “You are being suckered, your money is being wasted and you need to cut X, Y & Z expenses”. They don’t get all the money up-front, so money is being spent that hasn’t actually been earned yet.
It’s not my business but, I would really love to know what his brother was “assisting” with that justified a $100,000 a year salary? Helping spend money? I would hazard a guess that his brother was dipping into funds other than his salary to buy “extras” for himself. Even if you want to buy a house or car for your parents, grandparents or siblings, you could do all of that without spending 1.5 MM in 10 months.
People seem to think when you get sign a multi-million dollar deal you should buy mansions and the most expensive luxury cars and go on exotic vacations and that’s how you spend 1.5 MM in 10 months.
Whatever happened to living a bit more modestly? Most people don’t need a 6 MM dollar estate, with 50 rooms, tennis courts, basketball courts, bowling alley, 10 car garage, etc, etc, etc. Pro athletes train almost year-round, so they are not going to be driving that Lykan HyperSport or Bugatti Veyron very much. Why does your whole family (parents, siblings, aunt/uncle, cousins, etc.) need to move into your home? If I’m not mistaken, Trent Richardson has 2 children and wife (or fiancee), so they should be the ones most directly benefiting from Richardson’s blood, sweat, tears and athletic ability.
As Admin has posted multiple times, “No” is a complete sentence. You don’t have to explain or defend yourself. Being “faammiillyy” doesn’t entitle you to anyone’s money or to tell them how to spend it.
Clicked submit too soon- How does having 11 Netflix and 8 Hulu accounts, all being paid from the same bank account, not trigger a flag or at least a phone call? If I was a club owner/operator and someone came in dropping a name, such “Trent Richardson is my brother/cousin/BFF”, I would say “How nice for you” but I wouldn’t be handing out $19,000 dollar bottles of Gout de Diamants and billing it to Richardson.
I’m incredibly sad that his family and friends felt it was ok to spend this young man’s money and not even give two hoots about how hard he had to work to earn it.
How did they even get his bank account information in the first place? Was he dumb enough to give it out or did they steal a credit card?
I don’t see how this guy can be financially responsible for netflix and bottle service just because people used his name. I can’t just go to a club and say, oh put this on Angelina Jolie’s tab, and have it show up on her next bank statement. Trent Richardson must have given someone some signing authority over his banking account.
He probably gave signing authorization over this his brother who was acting as his personal assistant.
And the brother than signed for, or verified the charges over the phone.
Trent says in the interview that his brother is a good guy who has a hard time saying no.
So it seems like the way to Trent’s money was through his brother.
Poor guy. Admin is right; he is still not looking at this realistically. People who truly love you look out for you, not use you. He definitely needs to get some good financial advice, as well as develop trustworthy relationships, which can be hard when one is a professional athlete making the big bucks. I can’t imagine not being able to trust my own family and friends, but it happens, as we see here.
Trent Richardson is far from the first and unfortunately won’t be the last athlete this happens to. The ESPN documentary series “30 for 30” has an episode called “Broke” where a similar story is told by many different athletes. One of the saddest was probably former Cleveland Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar. His own father made himself be Bernie’s manager and his family took him for ALL he had. But since it was his father, Bernie couldn’t bring himself to say “no.” So many want to trust family over professional managers and agents, but at least they come with legal contracts and it seems you need a written contract even more with family than strangers.
It sounds more like he was telling them they could buy stuff, and didn’t realize how much it added up.
“He’s such a good person, and he wants to please everyone. And I think sometimes when guys have that personality, which is a great personality to have, it makes it very difficult to disappoint anyone with the word ‘No.’”
Looks like he didn’t say no.
Sometimes the family members of suddenly-rich celebrities and sports stars think they’re now entitled to a piece of the pie. Especially the parents! The, “I’ve done this-and-that for you, now YOU owe me!” mentality. It gets out of control.
And sometimes they think, “I just want this one thing. It’s only a drop in the bucket, that’s okay.” But when it’s lots and lots of “just one thing,” it also adds up and suddenly you’ve spent a whole lot of your relative’s not-actually-infinite money.
Sad to say, but this doesn’t just happen to celebrities. Years ago, I was floored when, at a school field trip to one of those indoor gym places with additional games that required tickets, children who I barely knew were coming up to me demanding (not asking, demanding) I give them money so they could play skeeball some more. Uh, No. (I knew the parents of some of them and was thus doubly shocked that their children could feel that entitled.)
You were probably just one of the people they hit up there. And they hoped that somebody would pay them off just to get rid of them as it’s probably worked in the past.
I’m so confused. On one hand, the story is that Trent Richardson did not agree to these charges, and on the other hand he says that he was told about the exploitation at the time but didn’t want to deal with it. And he hires his brother to be his gatekeeper but then never checks his own accounts or monitors how his brother is doing his job. It sounds as if he was quite aware of the exploitation at the time but let it continue, unchecked. That’s a very clear “yes” to all his freeloaders, right there, so he can’t blame them entirely once he gave them the indication their behaviour was okay. No one blindsided him, he willingly abdicated his responsibility to himself.
It’s good that he realized this before he went bankrupt. And I do agree with Admin that what his family and friends did to him was not “love”. They may love him after all but they sure showed the opposite. It would be good for him to cut off all the financial gifts completely and see how that affects the relationship dynamics. It’s the only way to know if people will associate with him because they care about him or about his money. People who really love him will want to be beside him even if they don’t get a crumb. It would hurt terribly to lose those freeloaders at first but not clarifying things will only prolong the pain and even lead to disastrous consequences for him, when he gets into that inevitable situation where he really needs support and then finds out he has invested all his personal energies in people who are not true friends, and that he has no real support network.
I think he meant he had fellow players and management telling him, “You got to keep your friends and family on a short leash. I’m telling you, now that you got money they’re going to screw you over.” And he didn’t believe them because surely his loved ones wouldn’t go behind his back and treat him like their personal piggy bank. And then one day he took a good look at his bank account.
Whenever I hear that the winning Lotto ticket had been sold at such-and-such a store, but no one has claimed the prize yet, I imagine it is someone who is lining up a lawyer and whatnot before collecting the dough so his greedy relatives/friends can’t get their grubby hands on it.
That’s what I would do. My family has decided that I must play the role of family doormat, and they get mad at me when I won’t roll over for them.
When the lotto was ridiculously high last year, my husband’s extended family were sitting at dinner one night talking about what they would do if they won. When they got to me and my husband, DH said, “You will never know, because if we won, we would contact a lawyer and disappear to an island we purchased.” This seriously upset my inlaws, because they claimed they would share it with faaaaaamily. But DH and I have talked about this and if we ever managed to come into a lot of money, they would think nothing of asking for it. They have already made comments about what they would do if they made the money we make now. One relative in particular expects the family to float her for the rest of her life, so she doesn’t have to work. So no, we would disappear. DH’s parents would be flown in to visit. The rest might get a fruit basket at Christmas.
Yeah that was the first thing my brother said, that he’d share it. He’d be so angry if I won because I’d probably make him take a personal finance class and make a budget before I’d give him any money. And I’m also the kind of person, if you were to say you need $100 to pay your doctor bill, I’d take the bill and pay it myself, not give you the money. I would have so many relatives (who pay me little attention now) coming out of the woodwork.
Exactly, I have a few on both sides that are already PITA’s about trying to spend everyone else’s money, if I came into a serious amount of it, I’d be disappearing fast. A few states do not require the lottery winner to be named, and if I want a lotto ticket when the stakes are high I’d be tempted to make the trip to buy one in one of those states, to give me more lead time if I won, to evaporate.
I do think there is likely love and caring from the friends and family. It’s been overshadowed, however, by that greed they displayed when they all wanted a piece of the pie (as kgg put it). They used their relationship with Richardson to justify taking a portion of the money, when in any other circumstance by any other person they would rightly call it theft.
I’m also quite disappointed in the companies that allowed these accounts to be created in Richardson’s name, but then I don’t know every detail of how it was done so they may have been just as out of the loop as Richardson himself was (after all, some accounts just require a bit of financial info to set up, and some will allow you to make more than one for yourself if you’re gifting them to people).
I hope he got everything locked down legally, and there should be some legal recourse possible. That amount of bleeding is incredible, and too entirely possible. Many stories in my family of similar… sigh.
I agree with some other comments, if you offer someone a multimillion contract and they’ve never seen that kind of fundage, a seriously vetted financial manager or legal person or both, should also be the next thing the person gets to meet after they sign the contract!!!!! They may destroy themselves (professional sports) and end up disabled for the rest of their life, they need that money in case (now if they choose to blow it by living large, that’s another, but for someone that has no clue, there should be some guidance during the rookie orientation)
More evidence that we really need to teach all kids how money works….so many people don’t know the simplest things about it. Most of us are fortunate enough to learn this kind of lesson early in childhood….the special candy that disappears in a heartbeat when you offer one piece to one indiscreet person, etc. Glad to hear this nice man caught on quickly enough to save himself.
Remember too, this is far from the first case of this happening. In Hollywood. Jackie Coogan and Charlie Chaplin. Jackie Coogan (more known for Uncle Fester in the Addams Family TV series of the 60’s) was a child star in some of Chaplin’s movies. His family spent his money on big houses, fancy cars, etc. He ended up flat broke as they burned through every penny he made. His case got the ‘Jackie Coogan’ law passed where child stars’ income goes into a trust that they can touch when they get legal age (21 usually). A reasonable amount can be spent to keep the kid (and family) clothed, fed and housed, but. This isn’t a new phenomenon….
I recall the young actor who played the son in “The Cosby Show” saying that he used to hate having to go with his mother to the accounting firm’s office to go over where his salary was being invested. He found it boring and tried, as a teen, to refuse to go.
His mother said, “You are not going to come to me when you are an adult, asking me where your money is. You are going to know where every penny is, right up to the day you can spend it. Now, get in the car.”
Bravo!
Reminds me of the Kirsty MacColl song, “Wrong Again”.
And you throw me a cliché like “we’ll still be friends”
Well mister, you’re wrong again.
Cause my friends are people who love me
Not like you, not like you
And they try to take good care of me
They wouldn’t hurt me like you do.
I wonder how many of his “friends” are still around now that the money fountain has dried up?
In the linked article it says that he has now been released from the Ravens because he is having trouble healing properly from injuries, so he can’t play as well as he normally would. So now he has NO income at all and if he doesn’t get another contract or some form of employment, how is he going to support his children? Those moochers and leeches sure aren’t going to get a job and help!
However, as previous commenters have pointed out, Richardson must have given someone some kind of authority, access and/or a bank or credit card. Most places require some form of payment before a purchase is processed.
The HBO show “Ballers” has a storyline just like this, where a big-time football star’s friends and family are bleeding him dry, but a financial planner who was a former player, steps in and helps him control the bleeding.
They loved him; they really, really loved spending his money. It is best to limit who has access to your bank accounts.
I had the same problem with an aunt. Her husband died young and left her with very little. I tried to make things a lot easier for her.
She thought I was her personal piggy bank and spent six-hundred dollars of my money, sending me the bill . When I cut off her expense account, she was furious and started spreading lies about me. That ended her access to any of my money at all.