Reggie Fowler

Last updated

Reggie Fowler
No. 90
Position: Linebacker
Personal information
Born: (1959-02-04) February 4, 1959 (age 64)
Birmingham, Alabama
Height:6 ft 2 in (1.88 m)
Weight:220 lb (100 kg)
Career information
High school: Sahuaro High School
(Tucson, Arizona)
College: Wyoming
Undrafted: 1982
Career history
 * Offseason and/or practice squad member only
Career USFL statistics
Games Played:5
FF / FR:0 / 1

Reginald Dennis Fowler (born February 4, 1959) is an American former football player, businessman, and convicted fraudster. [1] He played with the Arizona Wranglers, and later invested in the Minnesota Vikings. He was involved in the Alliance of American Football. He was the owner of Spiral, Inc. and Kyrene OEM, LLC (formerly OEM Logistics, Inc.) in Tempe, Arizona.

Contents

Early life

Fowler is the son of Al and Eloise Fowler, and one of their five children.[ citation needed ] When his father retired from the U.S. Air Force, he moved his family to Tucson, Arizona, where he opened a restaurant called Al's Pit Bar-B-Que. Reggie worked as a dishwasher there. The original location was to become the setting for the 1974 Martin Scorsese film, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.[ citation needed ]

After Fowler's family relocated to the east side of town, he attended Magee Junior High School and later Sahuaro High School, where he played football, as did his brother, Jeff. Fowler was inducted into the Sahuaro High School Alumni (Cougar Foundation) Hall of Fame in 1998. [2]

Playing career

Fowler graduated from Sahuaro in 1977 and enrolled at Wyoming on a football scholarship. There he started out as a running back, the position he played in high school, but later switched to wide receiver and linebacker positions. He graduated in December 1981, with a bachelor's degree in Social Work.[ citation needed ] Though he was not drafted, he attended training camp for the Cincinnati Bengals but was cut from the team before the beginning of the season.

When the United States Football League (USFL) was formed in 1983, Fowler was selected to play for the Arizona Wranglers but played sparingly as a reserve linebacker. He saw action in the last six games of the 1983 season – last playing on Sunday, July 3 in Pontiac, Michigan. The Wranglers transferred the majority of their rostered players to the Chicago Blitz in September 1983; however, he was not part of the transaction and was released.

Business career

Fowler took business courses at Arizona State University, then took a job with Mobil Oil's chemical division, where he worked in sales.[ citation needed ] He left that position to start Spiral in 1989, reportedly with an initial investment of only $1,000.

Minnesota Vikings

He was one of a group of investors, led by Zygmunt Wilf, who purchased the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings from previous owner Red McCombs in 2005. He initially sought to be the general partner himself, thereby becoming the first minority owner of an NFL franchise, but withdrew his bid when he could not provide details about his stake in the ownership group. Instead, he became a limited partner in the group so that he would not lose his $20 million deposit. He did not disclose any information about his financial situation to the media. By October 2014, he was no longer a limited partner of the Minnesota Vikings. [3]

Alliance of American Football

Fowler was a major investor in the Alliance of American Football (AAF). His decision to withdraw his funding after the first week of the season forced the league to hastily sell his stake to Thomas Dundon, ultimately leading to the league's demise. League executives were neither forthright nor truthful about the state of the league's finances throughout its existence and in particular were desperate to conceal Fowler's involvement, which was only made public after the league collapsed. [4]

Crypto Capital

In April 2019 Fowler's funds were frozen by the Department of Justice, after his indictment on charges of money laundering for cryptocurrency exchanges. [5]

In April 2019, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a suit accusing cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex of using the reserves of an affiliated company to cover up a loss of $850 million. Bitfinex had been unable to obtain a normal banking relationship, according to the lawsuit, so it deposited over $1 billion with a Panamanian payment processor known as Crypto Capital Corp. No contract was ever signed with Crypto Capital. [6] James alleged that in 2018 Bitfinex knew or suspected that Crypto Capital had absconded with the money, but that their investors were never informed of the loss. [6]

Fowler, who is alleged to have connections with Crypto Capital, was indicted on April 30, 2019, for running an unlicensed money transmitting business for cryptocurrency traders. He is believed to have failed to return about $850 million to an unnamed client. Investigators also seized $14,000 in counterfeit currency from his office. [7]

In March, 2020, investors in Gerald Cotten's Quadriga filed court documents alleging Fowler played a role in the disappearance of their investment. [8]

In April 2022, Fowler pleaded guilty to bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, and wire fraud. [9]

On Monday June 5, 2023 Fowler was sentenced in Manhattan federal court to six years and three months in prison and was ordered to forfeit $740 million and pay restitution of $53 million. [10]

Related Research Articles

A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sahuaro High School</span> Public secondary school in Tucson, Arizona, United States

Sahuaro High School is a public high school located in Tucson, Arizona, United States, part of the Tucson Unified School District. It is located on the far east side of the city at 545 North Camino Seco, just north of Vicksburg Street between Broadway and Speedway Boulevards. Contemporary establishments Sabino High School and Santa Rita High School have similar facilities. The school's mascot is the cougar, and its colors are scarlet and navy.

Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlie Shrem</span> American entrepreneur

Charles Shrem IV is an American entrepreneur and bitcoin advocate. He co-founded the now-defunct startup company BitInstant, and is a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation. In 2014 he was sentenced to two years in prison for aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to the Silk Road marketplace. He was released from prison in 2016. In 2017, he joined Jaxx and served as its chief operating officer, and founded cryptocurrency advisory CryptoIQ.

A cryptocurrency tumbler or cryptocurrency mixing service is a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source. This is usually done by pooling together source funds from multiple inputs for a large and random period of time, and then spitting them back out to destination addresses. As all the funds are lumped together and then distributed at random times, it is very difficult to trace exact coins. Tumblers have arisen to improve the anonymity of cryptocurrencies, usually bitcoin, since the digital currencies provide a public ledger of all transactions. Due to its goal of anonymity, tumblers have been used to money launder cryptocurrency.

BitGo, Inc. is a digital asset trust company and security company, headquartered in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 2013 by Mike Belshe and Ben Davenport. Galaxy Digital announced its acquisition of BitGo in 2021 for $1.2 billion, although this acquisition was announced to have been canceled in 2022 after the crypto downturn, with BitGo continuing as an independent company.

Kraken is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$10.8 billion in mid-2022. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million.

Gemini Trust Company, LLC (Gemini) is an American cryptocurrency exchange and custodian that allows customers to buy, sell, and store digital assets. It was founded in 2014 by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Currently, Gemini operates in 60+ countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quadriga Fintech Solutions</span> Former Canadian cryptocurrency company

Quadriga Fintech Solutions was the owner and operator of QuadrigaCX, which was believed to be Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange at the time of its collapse. In 2019 the exchange ceased operations and the company filed for bankruptcy with C$215.7 million in liabilities and about C$28 million in assets.

Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc, and is registered in the British Virgin Islands. Bitfinex was founded in 2012. It was originally a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange, and later added support for other cryptocurrencies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitconnect</span> 2016–2018 fraudulent cryptocurrency

Bitconnect was an open-source cryptocurrency in 2016–2018 that was connected with a high-yield investment program, a type of Ponzi scheme. After the platform administrators closed the earning platform on January 16, 2018, and refunded the users' investments in BCC following a 92% coin value crash, confidence was lost and the value of the coin plummeted to below $1 from a previous high of nearly $525.

Tether is a cryptocurrency stablecoin, launched by the company Tether Limited Inc. in 2014. As of July 2022, Tether Limited has minted the USDT stablecoin on ten protocols and blockchains. Tether is promoted as being a stablecoin because it was originally designed to be valued at US$1.00.

Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is a global company that operates the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China, then moved its headquarters to Singapore shortly before the Chinese government imposed regulations on cryptocurrency trading. Binance subsequently left Singapore in late 2021 and after that, had no official company headquarters.

Cryptocurrency and crime describes notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some of the methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that has been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Changpeng Zhao</span> Chinese-Canadian business executive

Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-born Canadian businessman, investor, and software engineer. Zhao is the co-founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume as of July 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alliance of American Football</span> Former professional American football league

The Alliance of American Football (AAF) was a professional American football minor league. The AAF consisted of eight centrally owned and operated teams in the southern and western United States, seven of which were located in metropolitan areas with at least one major professional sports franchise.

Bithumb is a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in 2014, Bithumb Korea has 8 million registered users, 1 million mobile app users, and a current cumulative transaction volume has exceeded USD $1 trillion.

FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX, is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang and, at its peak in July 2021, had over one million users and was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in the Bahamas. FTX is closely associated with FTX.US, a separate exchange available to US residents.

The Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange was hacked in August 2016. 119,756 bitcoin, worth about US$72 million at the time, were stolen.

References

  1. ↑ Collins, Terry (June 5, 2023). "Ex-Minnesota Vikings co-owner sent to prison in $700M cyrptocurrency shadow bank scam". USAToday.com. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
  2. ↑ SHS Cougar Foundation Hall of Fame Archived November 1, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ http://www.startribune.com/sports/vikings/280736412.html
  4. ↑ Kartje, Ryan (April 5, 2019). "AAF goes under: Inside the sudden collapse of the Alliance of American Football". Orange County Register . Retrieved April 5, 2019.
  5. ↑ Orr, Conor (May 1, 2019). "The Curious Rise and Spectacular Crash of the Alliance of American Football". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved May 2, 2019.
  6. 1 2 Larson, Erik; Leising, Matthew; Kharif, Olga (April 26, 2019). "Crypto Market Roiled by New Allegations Against Tether, Bitfinex". Bloomberg. Retrieved May 5, 2019.
  7. ↑ Robinson, Matt; Kharif, Olga; Leising, Matthew (May 3, 2019). "Ex-NFL Owner Said to Be Tied to $850 Million Crypto Mystery". Bloomberg. Retrieved May 5, 2019.
  8. ↑ Margi Murphy; Hasan Chowdhury; Harry de Quetteville; Saurabh Yadav (March 15, 2020). "Revealed: London bank accounts that could hold key to dead crypto tycoon's lost millions". The Telegraph (UK) . Archived from the original on March 17, 2020. Retrieved March 16, 2020. There, on March 5, the former owner of an American football team, Reginald Fowler, stood before a judge and pleaded not guilty to an immense financial scam. Fowler is alleged to be Quadriga's "banker" and linked the HSBC accounts. If found guilty, he faces 30 years in jail.
  9. ↑ "Former Co-Owner Of Vikings Pleads Guilty To Providing Shadow Banking Services To Cryptocurrency Exchanges". April 25, 2022.
  10. ↑ "Former Vikings part owner, AAF investor Reggie Fowler receives six-year sentence". NBCSports.com. June 6, 2023. Retrieved September 23, 2023.
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