Michael James Wing (born 1960), commonly "Mike Wing", is an American author of Talking With Your Customers: What They Will Tell You About Your Business,[3] convicted of wire fraud and implicated in other scandals, and a sports coach.[2]
Wing worked as a White House Fellow from 1992 to 1993 during his time at Gordon College.[4][5] In 1993, Dearborn Financial Publishing of Chicago printed his book Talking With Your Customers: What They Will Tell You About Your Business, and Arthur Andersen signed on to another printing in 1997.[3][6]
Wing cast a shadow of debt over the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, and erected a unique landmark.
U.S. Space and Rocket Center
Wing served as executive director of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center from 1998 to 1999, where he plunged the center into debt.[7] Wing oversaw construction of a full-scale vertical Saturn V replica to be finished at by the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, July 1999. It serves as a towering landmark in Huntsville, and cost the center $8.6 million of borrowed money. The Huntsville Times estimated interest costs at $10 million. Wing also sought to create a program for fifth grade students in Alabama and elsewhere to attend Space Camp at no cost to them. Anonymous corporate pledges that Wing promised would fund the $800 per student never arrived. Wing prolonged the Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission's investigation into the pledges by writing bogus personal checks and having the center record them as received. The program ultimately cost the center $7.5 million. Wing was pressured to resign, and several members of the governing Alabama Space Science Exhibit Commission were ousted from that board as a result of the debacle.[8][9] At the end of Wing's term as director, the center was $26 million in debt.[10][11][12] The state sued Wing for $7.5 million over the Space Camp fraud. They settled for $500,000.[13]
Texas attorney
Wing's next position was as an attorney in Tyler, Texas.[14] He was licensed to practice in Texas from September 2000 until his resignation from the bar in February 2008.[15][2] Leveraging his position as attorney and the skill and trust afforded because of same, Wing offered to his victims that they could invest in bridge loans that didn't exist. Instead of a bridge loan, he used the monies from those accounts and others to pay off prior "investors" and for his own purposes. Wing resigned from the State Bar of Texas after pleading guilty to wire fraud.[2]
College sports coach
Wing served as baseball coach for LeTourneau Athletics from 2002 to 2003 while the team posted 35 wins to 47 losses.[16][17][18]
Criminal proceedings
Wing was arrested on April 12, 2006, and charged with 18 counts of wire fraud underlying a scheme to defraud investors by offering high returns on investments for bridge loans among companies which he declined to name citing insider trading rules. He pleaded guilty to at least one count of wire fraud and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, 3 years of probation, and $9.2 million ($12.98 million in current dollars) in restitution. He was released from prison on probation in 2014.[14][4][2]
In 2017, Wing was sentenced to 6 months in prison for a parole violation brought on by taking out loans without informing parole officers.[4]
High school coach
Wing took a job as coach at Ranier High School in 2016,[19] and left that job on account of a parole violation 14 months later.[20]
In 2019, Wing took a position as and then resigned as coach from coaching baseball at remote rural Idaho West Jefferson High School where he had pledged to raise millions for a baseball complex while having 13 players on the team.[4][21]
Published works
Wing wrote the book Talking with Your Customers: What They Will Tell You about Your Business when You Ask the Right Questions published by Enterprise Dearborn in 1993.[3] A 1997 edition had input from Arthur Andersen and added information about the internet.[22]
Alabama is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th largest by area and the 24th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states.
Longview is a city in, and county seat of, Gregg County, Texas, United States. Longview is located in East Texas, where Interstate 20 and U.S. highways 80 and 259 converge just north of the Sabine River. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the city had a population of 81,638. Longview is the principal city of the Longview metropolitan statistical area, comprising Gregg, Upshur, and Rusk counties. The population of the metropolitan area as of 2021 census estimates was 287,858.
LeTourneau University (LETU) is a private, interdenominational evangelical Christian university in Longview, Texas. Founded as LeTourneau Technical Institute in February 1946 by R. G. LeTourneau with his wife, Evelyn, the school initially educated veterans returning from World War II. Total annual enrollment is nearly 3,000.
East Texas is a broadly defined cultural, geographic, and ecological region in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Texas that comprises most of 41 counties. It is primarily divided into Northeast and Southeast Texas. Most of the region consists of the Piney Woods ecoregion. East Texas can sometimes be defined only as the Piney Woods. At the fringes, towards Central Texas, the forests expand outward toward sparser trees and eventually into open plains.
Sam Houston State University is a public research university in Huntsville, Texas. Founded in 1879, it is the third-oldest public college or university in Texas. It is one of the first normal schools west of the Mississippi River and the first in Texas. The school is named for Sam Houston, who made his home in the city and is buried there.
The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama is a museum operated by the government of Alabama, showcasing rockets, achievements, and artifacts of the U.S. space program. Sometimes billed as "Earth's largest space museum", astronaut Owen Garriott described the place as, "a great way to learn about space in a town that has embraced the space program from the very beginning."
UFCU Disch–Falk Field is the baseball stadium of the University of Texas at Austin. It has been home to Texas Longhorns baseball since it opened on February 17, 1975, replacing Clark Field as the home of the Longhorns.
East Texas Regional Airport is an airport located in Gregg County, Texas. The airport is just South of the city of Lakeport, and is 9 mi south of Longview. Its IATA identifier GGG comes from its prior name, Gregg County Airport. The airport is used for general aviation and military training; it has scheduled flights to Dallas/Fort Worth on American Airlines/American Eagle.
Virgil I. Grissom High School, more commonly referred to as Grissom High School, is a public high school in Huntsville, Alabama, United States with approximately 2000 students in grades 9–12 from Southeast Huntsville. The school was named a 2007 Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. In the Newsweek ranking of schools throughout the nation in 2015, Grissom High School was ranked second-best in the state and 390th nationally.
The Brownstone Lane murders were the mass murders of four people at a residence on Brownstone Lane in Houston, Texas. On June 20, 1992, three men tied up six people and shot all of them in the head execution-style. Four of the six victims died. The perpetrators: Marion Butler Dudley, Arthur "Squirt" Brown Jr., and Antonia "Tony" Lamone Dunson were convicted of capital murder. Dudley and Brown were sentenced to death, while Dunson was sentenced to life in prison.
William Wesley Neighbors was an American football guard who played in the American Football League (AFL) from 1962 to 1969. Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he played college football at the University of Alabama where he was a consensus All-American in 1961 and was selected in sixth round of the 1962 AFL Draft. Neighbors was also drafted in the fourth round of the 1962 NFL Draft by the Washington Redskins. Neighbors was selected to the Boston Patriots All-1960s (AFL) Team and was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
Longview High School is a public high school located in the city of Longview, Texas, in Gregg County, United States and classified as a 6A school by the UIL. It is a part of the Longview Independent School District located in eastern Gregg County. The school was founded in 1874 as the Longview Male and Female Institute, and the first permanent structure was established in 1885. In 2017, the school earned 7-out-of-7 distinctions from the Texas Education Agency.
KYKX is an Alpha Media radio station, licensed to Longview, Texas, United States, and serving East Texas with a country music format. KYKX features programming from Fox News Radio and the Bobby Bones Radio Show. KYKX maintains two separate studios; 4408 North US Highway 259 in Longview, and 210 South Broadway Ave., Suite 100 in Tyler. The transmitter site is located near FM 1844 and SH 300 in Upshur County, Texas.
Brasfield & Gorrie, LLC, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is one of the United States' largest privately held construction firms, providing general contracting, design-build, and construction management services for a wide variety of markets. Founded in 1964, Brasfield & Gorrie has 12 offices and approximately 3,500 employees. Its 2022 revenues were $5 billion. Engineering News-Record ranks Brasfield & Gorrie 21st among the nation’s “Top 400 Contractors” for 2022. Modern Healthcare ranks the company No. 1 among healthcare general contractors in the nation.
McFarland Mall was a regional 497,000-square-foot (46,200 m2) L-shaped shopping mall on Skyland Boulevard in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Located near the interchange of Interstate 20/59 with McFarland Boulevard, it was in the southern section of the city. Opening on February 19, 1969, the mall replaced Woods Square Shopping Center and Leland Shopping Center as the main commercial retail center in the Tuscaloosa area. Brandon Crawford and Associates of Birmingham was the architect for the mall. General contractor for the project was N.C. Morgan Construction Company of Tuscaloosa. McGiffert and Associates of Tuscaloosa provided the engineering services for the mall.
Kami-Con is an annual three-day anime convention held during January or February in Birmingham, Alabama at the Birmingham–Jefferson Convention Complex by the Bama SOS Brigade, a student organization from the University of Alabama.
Alabama's first aeronautical event was on 10 March 1910 with the flight of a Wright biplane flown by Orville Wright in Montgomery, Alabama.
Paul Burnum was a coach of multiple sports at the University of Alabama, having served as head coach of the school's men's basketball and baseball teams and an assistant for the football team. He was also the head football coach at Tuscaloosa High School in the university's home city of Tuscaloosa, where he led the Black Bears to an undefeated record, five state championships and a pair of national championships during his five-year tenure there. After his career as a coach ended, Burnum worked in private business and served as a member of the Tuscaloosa City Board of Education. After his death in 1981, Burnum was posthumously inducted into Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.
Robert Kendall Luna is a former American football safety in the National Football League (NFL) for the San Francisco 49ers and Pittsburgh Steelers. He played college football at the University of Alabama.
KARW was a radio station broadcasting at 1280 kHz AM in Longview, Texas, United States, between 1948 and 1994. The station was last owned by Pine Tree Media, Inc.
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