When Nashville Predators co-owner Boots Del Biaggio was accused of defrauding banks and conducting the financial equivalent of a three card monty game, the uninitiated might have been alarmed. Here was the NHL, a multi-billion dollar concern, seemingly buffaloed by a minor league scam man whose principal gift was liberating the contents of other peoples’ pockets. Couldn’t the league find anyone with an accounting degree to check this guy out? The answer, apparently, is no. Boots isn’t the first NHL owner accused of fraud. In fact, league owners have long had a penchant for behaving like the special ed wing of the Gambino Family. A sport that makes felony assault punishable by a five-minute timeout doesn’t always attract the finest people. Consider: Former Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McCall, who was sentenced to five years in federal prison for illicitly grubbing $236 million from various financial institutions. Another Kings owner. Jeffrey Sudikoff, got a $3 million fine and a year in the slam for insider trading. Meanwhile, John Spano, onetime owner of the New York Islanders, also received a five-year sentence for bank and wire fraud. He was convicted of running the same game Del Biaggio accused of playing – falsely claiming a net worth of $230 mil to coax Fleet Bank into loaning him $80 million. He was joined in the joint by another Islanders owner, Sanjay Kumar, who received 12 years in the slam for securities fraud and obstruction of justice performed at the company he once chaired, Computer Associates. And let us not forget the NHL’s greatest thief of all, former Buffalo Sabres owner John Rigas. He bought himself 15 years in the pen for a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme at Adelphia Communications, which led to the collapse of one of the nation’s largest cable companies. Given the history of the NHL, the Predators might be wise to hire their own accountants before choosing Del Biaggio’s replacement in the ownership group.
