Mike Tyson and Ric Flair have joined together to file a $50 million lawsuit against cannabis company Carma. Tyson and Flair had been business partners with Carma in creating the Tyson 2.0 and Ric Flair Drip cannabis products.
Tyson and Flair filed the 76-page civil lawsuit covering 21 counts last week in U.S. District Court in Illinois. The complaint names several former executives and a shareholder of Carma as defendants. They include Chad Bronstein, Adam Wilks, Nicole Cosby, and James Case. Bronstein was Carma’s president and chairman. Wilks served as the CEO. Cosby was the company’s chief legal and licensing officer. Case is a shareholder.
Front Office Sports reports that the lawsuit alleges the defendants engaged in a “brazen RICO conspiracy involving criminal wire fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, and extortion, as well as securities fraud and shameless self-dealing that enriched the Defendants to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.”
The defendants are accused of illegally selling licensing rights of both Mike Tyson and Ric Flair. They are also accused of working with vape maker DomPen in a deal where they “concealed payments in exchange for turning a blind eye to DomPen’s unauthorized use of Carma’s intellectual property.”
“Throughout their time at CARMA, Bronstein and Wilks treated CARMA as their own personal piggy bank, using more than $1 million to pay for unauthorized personal travel on private jets, costs associated with Bronstein’s personal yacht, renovations to Bronstein’s personal residence, a mortgage payment for Wilks’ personal residence, and lavish entertainment expenditures for Wilks, including exorbitantly priced meals and travel expenditures, as well as excessive and unapproved compensation and bonuses,” the lawsuit reads.
The defendants in the Mike Tyson, Ric Flair lawsuit claim they did nothing wrong
The attorney for Bronstein and Cosby called the lawsuit “fiction dressed up as a lawsuit.” Wilks’s attorney told Front Office Sports that “the allegations are without substance.”
Mike Tyson and Ric Flair are seeking a jury trial and more than $50 million in damages, legal fees, and other related costs.
Bronstein and Cosby were also sued in July by Carma for allegedly “misappropriating confidential information about a beer brand development project.” That lawsuit is currently still pending.