Getty Image / Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced today it had reached a settlement with disgraced former WWE CEO Vince McMahon regarding hush money deals. Specifically, they are in relation to millions of dollars Vince McMahon paid out to former WWE employees in exchange for silence but failed to disclose the 2019 and 2022 hush money payments to the WWE Board of Directors.
The first payment was in the amount of $3 million “in exchange for the former employee’s agreement to not disclose her relationship with McMahon and her release of potential claims against WWE and McMahon” according to the SEC’s press release. A second even larger payment for $7.5 million was also “in exchange for the independent contractor’s agreement to not disclose her allegations against McMahon and her release of potential claims against WWE and McMahon.”
Where Vince McMahon ran afoul with the SEC in all of this is by failing to disclose these massive payments in the WWE’s financial statements.
By failing to disclose the hush money payments the SEC says that “WWE overstated its 2018 net income by approximately 8 percent and its 2021 net income by approximately 1.7 percent. In addition, according to the order, these payments should have been disclosed as related party transactions.”
SEC Reaches Settlement With Vince McMahon
As part of the settlement, Vince McMahon has agreed to pay a veritable fortune in fines. Vince McMahon will now pay a $400,000 civil penalty and will “reimburse WWE $1,330,915.90 pursuant to Section 304(a) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.”
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a 2002 law created to “mandate certain practices in financial record keeping and reporting for corporations.”
Vince McMahon released a statement following the announcement of the settlement which reads:
“Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies. There has been a great deal of speculation about what exactly the government was investigating and what the outcome would be. As today’s resolution shows, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading. In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE. I’m thrilled that I can now put all this behind me.”
Based on Vince McMahon’s statement, it would seem that other ‘governmental agencies’ are no longer actively investigating him though that may not be the case at all as the Southern District of New York has an ongoing criminal investigation into Vince McMahon. He has been under a separate federal investigation since February of that last year.
Various investigations have been paused while others were pursued, as Deadline notes here back in May when McMahon’s trafficking investigation was paused for a DOJ investigation. McMahon is also facing a lawsuit from former WWE employee Janel Grant accusing Vince of trafficking and battery, as reported by ESPN.