Did Ickey Get a Fast Shuffle? : Finance: Suits, other reports allege money from Woods, Heyward and other NFL clients of agent Bruce Allen went to finance investments of his former business partner.

For much of this year, the Brighton Place Apartments have been a modern ghost town, standing unfinished and unoccupied behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire in a blighted South Phoenix neighborhood.

Work stopped last February with construction on the 80-unit, low-income housing project nearly finished. The project’s developer, Future Facilities, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to stave off foreclosure.

Described in court documents by one of Future Facilities’ creditors as “a shambles,” the Brighton Place Apartments are a grim sign of hard times in the Phoenix real estate market.

They are also a snapshot of the problems plaguing George Allen’s son, Bruce, a Phoenix sports agent.

While George Allen has, at 72, revived his career as the football coach at Cal State Long Beach, Bruce Allen, 34, has seen his agency, GBA Sportsworld, Inc., caught in a maelstrom of controversy.

The younger Allen has been accused of financial impropriety and violations of NCAA rules, charges that have arisen primarily in two lawsuits filed by former clients. Allen has dismissed the charges, claiming “jealousy” of rival agents as their source.

The Times, though, has found through public records, other documents and interviews that questions surrounding GBA Sportsworld’s investment practices go well beyond the lawsuits and have led to the defection of perhaps the agency’s most prominent client, running back Ickey Woods of the Cincinnati Bengals.

The documents and interviews indicate that several NFL players who have been clients of GBA Sportsworld have been unaware that their investment funds were used to finance real estate transactions for individuals and companies with ties to Allen’s agency.

All told, the situation has left nearly a dozen current and former NFL players bitter and disillusioned and, in some cases, seeking legal remedies.

IRONHEAD IS THROWN FOR A LOSS

Fullback Craig (Ironhead) Heyward of the New Orleans Saints, charging fraud, racketeering, breach of fiduciary duty, negligence and breach of contract in connection with the Brighton Place project, has sued Allen, GBA Sportsworld and Bob Owens, Allen’s former partner in the agency.

The suit, filed in Superior Court here, alleges that Heyward suffered $450,000 in investment losses, fees paid and lost investment opportunities as a result of the deal.

Now, Woods also has severed his relationship with Allen and hired a lawyer to untangle his finances, the Brighton Place deal in particular.

“What happened to me is after each (season) I had to borrow $50,000 to pay my bills,” Woods said. “And, with all of the money I was making, I was wondering why. I just got skeptical and had an accountant take a look. It seems as if my money wasn’t handled right. So I had to do what was best for me. And the best thing for me was to fire the guy.”

Woods said he has lost about $100,000 that was invested for him through GBA Sportsworld.

His lawyer, William Hayden of Cincinnati, said: “There is a substantial amount of money that’s unaccounted for.”

It’s unclear if these and other problems facing GBA Sportsworld shake out could have an impact on Cal State Long Beach, where George Allen, in his first college coaching job since 1956, led the 49ers to a 6-5 record.

A member of GBA Sportsworld’s board of directors, George Allen has, in the Heyward lawsuit, been linked to an improper recruiting trip orchestrated by his son.

In his suit, Heyward alleges that he met with both Bruce and George Allen during a trip to Washington, D.C., in January of 1988, shortly after his junior season at the University of Pittsburgh.

Heyward alleges that his expenses were paid by Bruce Allen and Mark Solomon, a GBA Sportsworld recruiter at the time, and that he signed a representation agreement with GBA Sportsworld during the trip.

NCAA rules prohibit an athlete from signing with an agent or accepting money or other gifts from an agent before the athlete’s eligibility has expired.

Shortly after returning from the trip, Heyward was dismissed from the team at Pitt by Mike Gottfried, then the Panthers’ coach. Gottfried’s action was prompted by a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporting that Heyward had traveled to Washington using an airline ticket booked by a Las Vegas travel agency and ordered by GBA Sportsworld.

Bruce Allen disputes the suit’s account of the Washington trip, saying that his father and Heyward both happened to be in the city at the same time to receive awards.

“I met (Heyward) there,” the younger Allen said. “We didn’t fly him there. And meeting my dad there? Yeah, he met my dad there. So did 4,000 other people. (Heyward’s version) is a little exaggeration by his counsel (Edward Vincent King Jr. of San Francisco).”

Neither Heyward nor King would consent to be interviewed for this story.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

It is Allen’s belief that most of his difficulties stem from rival agents, would-be agents and headline-hunting attorneys who view him as an easy target because of his father.

“I would like to think I’m successful,” he said. “But if my father ran a bakery in Redondo Beach, there wouldn’t have been any lawsuits, there wouldn’t have been any story. . . . There’s a lot of jealousy on the part of agents who are incompetent fueling this.”

By the same token, being George Allen’s son has helped Bruce Allen wear several hats in football without a great deal of experience. He was a graduate assistant coach at Arizona State at 22, head coach at Occidental at 23 and general manager of the Arizona Wranglers of the old United States Football League--a team that was coached by his father--at 28.

When the Wranglers were merged with the Oklahoma Outlaws after the 1984 USFL season, putting both Allens out of jobs, Bruce went into the agent business, forming GBA Sportsworld with Owens, a former assistant football coach at Arizona State and the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Within two years, the company was a success, representing eight players who were selected in the first six rounds of the 1987 NFL draft.

Shortly before the 1988 NFL draft, Allen told the Phoenix Business Journal: “Now, we get recommendations (for new clients) from our players. . . . People see what we’ve done for them.”

In that draft, GBA Sportsworld represented four of the first 50 players selected, among them Heyward and Woods.

Lately, however, the agency’s reputation has taken a beating.

UNHAPPY CLIENTS

The first blow landed in the form of a lawsuit filed in November of 1989 by one of GBA Sportsworld’s original clients, former Arizona State and New York Jet running back Vince Amoia.

In his suit, filed in Superior Court in Phoenix, Amoia charges Allen, Owens and other parties with breach of contract, fraud, racketeering and unjust enrichment in connection with a real estate transaction in Tempe.

The suit alleges that a house Amoia purchased in 1987 at GBA Sportsworld’s direction for $170,000 from a company known as JIL Enterprises, Inc., had in fact been transferred to JIL Enterprises by Allen only three days before the sale.

Amoia claims he was not informed of Allen’s involvement in the deal.

The suit also alleges that the house was worth less than $140,000 when Amoia bought it.

Amoia and his lawyer, Charles Franklin of Tempe, have described JIL Enterprises as a conduit for GBA Sportsworld real estate deals, and Maricopa (Ariz.) County and Arizona Corporation Commission records show that two JIL officers have been affiliated with Owens in another company, World Energy Systems, Inc.

In court papers filed in response to Amoia’s suit, which is in discovery, Allen said he was involved in the deal in name only and as a favor to Owens, who, according to Allen, wanted to acquire the property for investment purposes and was seeking to resolve a federal tax lien affixed to it.

Allen also said he did not know that Amoia had bought the property until October of 1989, when Amoia and a business associate, Joe Gerlardi, first raised questions about the transaction.

Allen noted that, at Gerlardi’s urging, Amoia threatened to go to the FBI unless Owens provided him with compensation in addition to buying back the house.

An FBI agent in Phoenix did, in fact, begin looking at GBA Sportsworld shortly after the Amoia suit was filed.

The inquiry focused on whether Allen’s agency had defrauded universities by secretly paying or signing athletes before their eligibility had expired, the same tactic the federal government used in prosecuting sports agents Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom in 1989.

Specifically, the inquiry looked at GBA Sportsworld’s dealings with Derek Hill, a wide receiver from the University of Arizona who now plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Last April, when the FBI inquiry was first mentioned in published reports in Atlanta and Phoenix, Gerlardi, a former Tucson bar owner, told the Phoenix Gazette that he had paid Hill about $16,000 on behalf of Allen while Hill was at Arizona. Gerlardi also was quoted as saying that he saw Hill sign a contract with Owens two weeks before the end of Hill’s senior season at Arizona in 1988.

Allen denied the charges, telling the Gazette that Gerlardi “gives money to all the U of A players--basketball, baseball, football.”

Owens said he signed Hill properly--a day after Arizona’s final game in ‘88--and defended the Amoia real estate deal, saying that Amoia actually bought the home for $10,000 under its appraised value.

As it turns out, the FBI dropped its inquiry, according to sources close to the matter, who asked not to be identified--in part because the information was thin and in part because the FBI’s Phoenix office had to commit most of its resources to investigating financier Charles Keating and his ownership of Lincoln Savings and Loan.

But the filing of Heyward’s lawsuit in September opened another window into GBA Sportsworld’s dealings--the Brighton Place Apartments.

THE BRIGHTON PLACE DEAL

According to interviews, public records and other documents obtained by The Times, the Brighton Place deal unfolded this way:

On Sept. 14, 1988, an Oklahoma corporation, TCM Enterprises, Inc., bought the land on which the project was to be built. The $435,000 transaction was financed with a loan from Owens, then Allen’s partner in GBA Sportsworld.

At the same time, Owens took $190,000 from Heyward and $70,000 from Woods, generating promissory notes in the players’ favor at 15% interest and assigned each a beneficial interest in the deed of trust securing Owens’ loan to TCM Enterprises.

Four months later, TCM sold the land to Future Facilities, Inc., the developer, for $925,000--Future Facilities paying $125,000 in cash and executing a note for $800,000 in favor of TCM to cover the rest.

Construction on the housing project began Feb. 1, 1989, but stopped a year later when Future Facilities filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $1.9 million in debts and seven secured creditors--the largest being TCM Enterprises.

Heyward and Woods, starting their rookie seasons in the NFL at the time they became involved in the deal, apparently knew that money was going to be invested for them in some manner by Owens.

But they apparently did not know that TCM Enterprises is an investment company set up by Tim Mills, a former college and professional football coach who, according to Maricopa County records, has been involved in a partnership with Owens known as BROTM Financial.

Now a Phoenix real estate investor, Mills has been an assistant coach at Pasadena City College, the head coach at Rancho Santiago College, an administrator with the Rams and an assistant coach with the Oklahoma and Arizona Outlaws of the USFL.

Mills formed TCM Enterprises in 1984, according to state records in Oklahoma, with Bill Tatham Jr. of Fresno, who was the Outlaws’ president.

In his lawsuit, Heyward claims that Owens, in his role as GBA Sportsworld’s financial adviser, told him that the Brighton Place deal was a “condominium development” that would generate a return of 15-18% on his investment. According to the suit, Owens failed to disclose Mills’ involvement in the deal or the fact that Heyward was investing in a promissory note rather than real property.

Woods claimed to have been told even less--only, he said, that he could expect “around 12, 15%” in returns on his investment.

“I don’t know where the money went,” he said. “They never did explain it to me.”

Said his attorney, Hayden: “(GBA Sportsworld) never obtained prior authorization or anything. They simply took the money and did (the deal).”

All disclosure questions aside, Hayden said, the Brighton Place deal was “highly speculative and very risky, certainly not a logical starting point for players just getting started with their careers.”

Said Hayden: “It’s like if I loan you $70,000, and you give me a mortgage that you got from somebody else. I mean, what does that do? If you fail to pay me, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the mortgage is in default.”

Woods and his attorney are not alone in their confusion.

MORE DEALS

Alarmed by the Amoia and Heyward lawsuits, at least four other current and former clients of GBA Sportsworld have directed Owens to get them out of similar deals.

“I told Bob that I needed my money back, I wasn’t sure about those investments anymore,” Atlanta wide receiver Shawn Collins said.

In the case of Collins, a first-round draft pick in 1989, Maricopa County records show that he was assigned a $15,000 interest in a $670,000 note held by Owens and secured by an office building owned by TCM Enterprises.

Maricopa County records also show that Collins was assigned a $32,000 interest in a $40,000 note held by Owens and secured by property owned by JIL Enterprises, the company whose ties to Owens surfaced in the Amoia suit.

Collins, who estimates that he invested $92,000, said he was told by Owens that he could expect 11% return on his investments.

As for details, he said he knew he was part of an office building deal involving TCM Enterprises, but wasn’t told of Mills’ relationship to Owens. And he said he doesn’t know anything about JIL Enterprises.

“(Owens) just said these were good deals,” Collins said. “I didn’t know his friends and partners were involved. We were lending money to his people for their investments? That was never explained to me. He just said, ‘Sign up for a good deal.’ ”

Similarly, Cleveland defensive lineman Tom Gibson said he became concerned about $17,000 in investments he had made through GBA Sportsworld after learning of the lawsuits.

And he, too, said he was never told of Owens’ relationship to Mills, although Maricopa County records show he was assigned interest in a note secured by property owned by Mills.

“I’ve learned one big lesson, I tell you,” Gibson said. “One thing a kid should know when he gets into this field is to (handle) your own money pretty much--or know what’s going on. I never had an idea what was going on. I was never brought up with (a good understanding of) money matters, I guess.”

For Owens, who left GBA Sportsworld in 1989 to tend to his own business interests, such talk is absurd.

The players, he said, were told up front how the deals worked and, for the most part, what other parties were involved. If they didn’t understand the deals, he said, it’s because they didn’t listen.

“All they would say is they want to do real estate, they want to do some deals,” he said. “I would explain to them what we were doing, try to explain it over and over and over again. And then they want their money out before their time (to collect). You have no idea.”

As it is, Owens said, he has been juggling his own interests in the depressed Phoenix real estate market in an attempt to pay back dissatisfied investors--in full and with interest, he said.

“If I’m out there cheating these kids, taking their money and not paying them back, then I’m a crook,” he said. “But I haven’t done that. Now when I started (putting together investments), we were able to turn these things in about 40 to 45 days, and we made them some good money. Then the market slowed down, and we weren’t able to do that. But not one player--not one player--has stayed in a deal at this point for the duration.”

He added: “I’m not saying I’ve done everything smart. But when all is said and done, nobody’s going to get hurt. I’m working diligently to make these things work. I can make them work. I just can’t do them all in one day.”

Mills did not respond to repeated phone messages from The Times.

DIFFERENT VIEWS

Public records in Arizona and California show that Bruce Allen has been an investor in similar deals orchestrated by Owens, some involving Mills. But Allen said he has little knowledge of the intricacies of the deals or those involving players he has represented.

“I don’t want to get involved in the legal ramifications of Heyward’s suit, but I don’t know what took place in his deal,” Allen said. “Bob met with him separately, and they made a deal. Separately. It had nothing to do with Sportsworld or me.”

Allen said his primary function at GBA Sportsworld has been to negotiate players’ contracts. Thus, he said, he can’t be held accountable for problems his clients may have encountered with investments made through Owens.

“It’s real simple,” Allen said. “Bob invested in GBA Sportsworld, about a 50% interest. What Bob did as an individual, I don’t know. I’m not trying to say anything disparaging against Bob. But, I mean, if he runs a traffic light, I don’t think you can blame me.”

Collins and Gibson have bought that explanation, accepting promises of repayment from Owens and remaining clients of GBA Sportsworld. Gibson said he has already received his $17,000. Collins said he has worked out a deal in which he will get his $92,000 back in quarterly payments.

But others have a different view.

“I don’t know whose fault it is,” said Woods, who recently rejected Owens’ offer of a repayment plan. “But it’s Bruce’s company, so I figure he’s in all of this, too.”

Said Hayden, Woods’ lawyer: “Ickey’s money went through that agency to Owens. If that doesn’t make a connection (to Allen), I don’t know what the hell does.”

Actually, the Brighton Place Apartments may yet get off the ground.

Future Facilities, Inc., the developer, voluntarily dismissed its bankruptcy proceeding last month after negotiating with its creditors, and construction has resumed. According to Eric Zimmerman, Future Facilities’ president, the project should be finished by the beginning of 1991.

Meeting that deadline will allow Zimmerman’s company to qualify for $700,000 in federal income tax credits over the next 10 years as part of a federal program to stimulate the development of privately funded low- and moderate-income housing projects.

As a result of the restructured debt, Zimmerman said, investors won’t make any money, but they will have a chance to recoup their original investments.