Advisors Named in Vick Lawsuit

The Department of Labor is suing Michael Vick and his former financial advisors for $1.35 million, alleging they improperly tapped into more than $1 million from the retirement plan of a business owned by the former National Football League star.

In a suit filed Wednesday, March 25, the Labor Department said Vick made a series of prohibited transfers from a pension plan sponsored by MV7, his celebrity marketing company.

The department alleges that he violated his duties as trustee of the plan, which covered nine current or former MV7 employees, and that Mary Wong and David Talbot—Vick’s former financial advisors—helped facilitate some of these transfers.

Along with Vick, the DOL named Wong and Talbot as defendants in the suit.

Talbot is already the subject of a lawsuit filed in August by the New Jersey Bureau of Securities, alleging that he conned members of a New Jersey church.

Jeffrey Lichtman, an attorney representing Talbot, said that his client “did not add to any of Michael Vick’s financial or legal troubles, and only served as his trusted advisor.”

Wong could not be immediately reached.

Mark Lichtenstein, a partner at New York-based law firm Crowell & Moring who is representing Vick, declined to comment.

The filing further complicates Vick’s bankruptcy case, which has gradually moved along in Newport News, Virginia, while Vick served a 23-month prison term in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Vick has apparently left the prison. The judge presiding in the bankruptcy case has ordered him to testify in person at next week’s hearing on confirmation of his Chapter 11 plan.

U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Felicia Ponce said Wednesday that Vick was at an Oklahoma prisoner transfer facility but added that she could not disclose the inmate’s ultimate destination.

There was no indication of when Vick left Leavenworth or when he would arrive in Virginia.

Filed by Mark Bruno of Investment News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.