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A lender to professional athletes wired $4.375m to a borrower it thought was Green Bay Packers star Xavier McKinney, only to learn months later it had allegedly been scammed by someone impersonating the player. The news is contained in Aliya Sports Finance Fund’s (ASFF) lawsuit against a longtime US sports industry loan broker, Sure Sports, for allegedly not performing satisfactory due diligence when it introduced what turned out to be apparently a fake McKinney to the lender. According to court papers, the FBI is probing the transaction.
Aliya, whose parent company is an investor in Reading FC, filed the lawsuit a year ago in state court in Florida, where both Sure Sports and Aliya are headquartered. The case is scheduled for a three-week trial beginning on 13 July.
Sure Sports introduces athletes to lenders and performs due diligence in advance of transactions, while earning fees like the $87,500 tab for the “McKinney” loan. Founded in 2009, the company has managed hundreds, if not thousands of such debt deals, sometimes at high interest rates and not always without controversy.
“Based on the information Sure Sports provided to ASFF, including its due diligence as to the identity and creditworthiness of McKinney and his company, XMK Companies, LLC, ASFF agreed to the terms of the Loan,” Aliya wrote in the complaint, which charges negligence, unjust enrichment and negligent misrepresentation. “ASFF has come to learn that the borrower apparently was not McKinney, but rather a third party who impersonated McKinney to facilitate the disbursement and theft of the Loan proceeds.”
The loan closed on 2 April 2024 and ASFF wired the money to an account the two parties apparently believed belonged to McKinney, the lawsuit says. McKinney signed a four-year, $67m contract with the Packers only weeks earlier.
According to the lawsuit, Sure Sports founder Leon McKenzie contacted Aliya on 10 September 2024 to inform them of a concern about “the source that brought us McKinney” and further updates would proceed as “we learn more through the FBI investigation”.
“Despite the alarming nature of the correspondence and the disclosure of the existence of an ongoing FBI investigation, Sure Sports did not advise that there was a problem with the Loan or borrowers,” reads Aliya’s complaint.
On 20 October 2024 Sure Sports contacted Aliya again to inform them McKinney had requested a change in his loan schedule, according to the complaint. Then a week later after Aliya followed up, Sure Sports told the lender, according to the complaint, “that the Loan may have been a scam perpetrated by someone other than McKinney, that the funds may therefore have been stolen by a third party, and that the FBI was investigating the matter”.
Sure Sports filed to dismiss the case last year, arguing Aliya had its own responsibility to perform due diligence on the loan, and the loan broker could not be expected to protect the lender from criminal acts.
“The Complaint fails to allege Sure Sports had a history of providing underwriting services for those found to be impersonating athletes or that other loans with McKinney and/or XMK Companies had resulted in discovery of imposters,” Sure Sports contended in a motion to dismiss. “In other words, ASFF’s Complaint is completely devoid of any allegation showing that Sure Sports should have objectively reasonably anticipated that an impersonator – who, it should be noted also scammed Sure Sports during the course of its provision of underwriting services – would facilitate the disbursement and theft of the Loan.”
Less than two months after Sure Sports filed the motion to dismiss, the judge turned it down. An attorney for Sure Sports declined to comment. Aliya’s attorney prepared this comment: “The Aliya Sports Finance Fund, LP is working to protect its investors from improper conduct that has caused damage to the fund. The fund cannot comment further given the pending litigation.”
McKinney appears to be a victim of identity theft and is not part of the case, at least directly. Aliya in a motion to the court wrote it intended to subpoena the NFL Players Association for a copy of his player contract, and all correspondence about the loan between the labor group and the player, Sure Sports, and federal investigators. And Aliya has asked Sure Sports to turn over all financial information and correspondence it had with McKinney, real or fake. The NFLPA did not reply for comment.
What about McKinney himself? His agency, Athletes First, declined to comment. The agency and McKinney have no role in the case.
The fake McKinney loan is not the only identity-theft case involving the cornerback that the FBI is probing, a source said, who asked for confidentiality because they were not authorized to speak publicly about an active indictment and federal investigation. On 16 March, the Department of Justice indicted Kwamaine Jerell Ford for allegedly targeting professional athletes through a phishing scam and engaging in a fraud and sex trafficking scheme. Victims were only ID’d by initials if at all in the indictment. The source said McKinney is one of them.
Sure Sports has been involved in lawsuits before. A US trustee sued the broker in 2022 for its role in NHL star Evander Kane’s bankruptcy. Sure Sports arranged more than $47m spread over at least 22 loans to Kane between 2014 and 2019, according to court documents. In January 2021, the winger filed for Chapter 7, declaring more than $26m of debts despite earning more than twice that amount in income over his career. Sure Sports filed as a creditor, claiming $1.2m in unpaid fees; but the bankruptcy trustee filed a lawsuit in 2022 against the loan broker for failing to file as an agent in California. (Kane was playing for the San Jose Sharks when he filed for Chapter 7.)
Last October, hours before the trial, the sides settled with Sure Sports agreeing to pay the trustee $452,000 and to drop its own lawsuit, according to court filings.
