As first reported by Scott Shaffer at BoxingTalk.com, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Al Haymon are being sued in Los Angeles Superior Court by a Nevada LLC by the name of Yogi Securities Holdings.
Yogi Securities, LLC sues M… by MMA Payout
The crux of the lawsuit is that the plaintiff through its authorized agent Joseph Englanoff believe that they were duped out of their portion of a payout from investing in selling tickets on the secondary market for the Logan Paul-Floyd Mayweather fight last June. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs invested $1.4 million in tickets.
According to the lawsuit, after the tickets were purchased and sold, Plaintiff’s entire investment would be repaid first, and then the profits from the sales would be split 75% to a mutual acquaintance to share with Mayweather and 25% to Plaintiff.
The story begins with the Englanoff and Maywether being friends for over three years socializing at each other’s homes. In 2021, Mayweather became interested in purchasing one of Englanoff’s homes in Bel Air. During this time, Mayweather and Englanoff discussed another business opportunity in which Mayweather would be able to access tickets to be sold for his fight with Paul. The tickets were allotted through an intermediary, Jona Rechnitz (referred to as “Jona” in the lawsuit) and if Englanoff invested, he would receive a portion of the payouts by June 13, 2021.
However, the money was not paid back to plaintiffs on the agreed upon date of June 13, 2021. There were several excuses that came about as a result of the nonpayment including the fact that Haymon was withholding the money and not releasing it but there were assurances that the money was forthcoming. However, it was not until June 24, 2021 that the plaintiffs learned that Jona had invested the money in the next PBC fight which became Manny Pacquiao’s August 2021 fight against Yordenis Ugas.
In July 2021, there were a series of stories and excuses as to why the money was not sent to plaintiffs. Jona had changed stories about the whereabouts of the money and gave plaintiffs $100,000 in a good faith showing that he would pay back the money. Plaintiffs were told that another intermediary was introduced to handle the investor payouts. Threats of a lawsuit by the plaintiff were made.
After the Pacquiao fight, plaintiffs were not compensated and they were told that the profits (from ticket sales) were only 20% which was less than expected. But, the new intermediary indicated that plaintiffs would be paid $5.743,200 to reflect the amount of the Pacquiao payout.
By October 2021, the $5.7M was not sent to Plaintiffs. Instead, $100,000 was sent to plaintiffs in another act of good faith. But, at this time, plaintiffs believed that they had made another ticket investment. In fact, per the lawsuit, this is what happened yet again as Jona invested into the next PBC promoted bout, Deontay Wilder-Tyson Fury III. Once again, plaintiffs were not paid after the Wilder fight as it was believed that the money was once again rolled into tickets for PBC’s next fight, Davis-Cruz.
Payout Perspective:
The lawsuit presents a long and winding tale of alleged fraud and misrepresentation regarding a purported scheme by Mayweather and Al Haymon related to selling tickets for a profit. Similar to a pyramid scheme, one might expect an outright denial of the facts occurring or the belief that an individual claiming to be associated with Mayweather and Haymon was the culprit. It looks like the intermediary being blamed here received payments and just rolled them into another investment without notifying the other investors. MPO will continue to follow.
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