Evander Kane’s bankruptcy has been explained all thanks to The Athletic. According to the report, the bankruptcy was a result of a “vicious cycle of loan after loan”.
Here are the details;
In 2017, then-San Jose Sharks forward Evander Kane owed $140,000 to a bookie who went by the pseudonym “Vinny,” and $100,000 to a casino, some of the tens of millions of dollars of debt that Kane, who filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection early last year, accumulated over his career. To make the payments, and others, he frequently borrowed from friends and scores of lenders. These details emerged in a court motion last week by his top creditor, Centennial Bank, which wants to block the bankruptcy to prevent Kane from walking away from his debts. The bank, which claims it is owed more than $8 million, included with its motion excerpts of a July deposition in which Kane outlined a history of borrowing tens of millions of dollars to pay off loans and other debts, including to bookies.
Centennial is trying to get to the heart of one of the most high-profile athlete bankruptcy cases in years: with over $50 million of career earnings and tens of millions of dollars of borrowings, what happened to the money? “I’m just trying to figure out what exactly, what you’ve done with your funds,” a Centennial lawyer asked Kane early on in the bankruptcy proceedings, during what is known as a 2004 examination, excerpts of which were attached to the bank’s motion.
When Kane, who now plays for the Edmonton Oilers, filed his petition nearly two years ago, he listed assets of $10.2 million and debts of $26.8 million, much of it recently borrowed bank debt. But between 2014 and 2018, Kane also borrowed almost $30 million in 16 separate transactions detailed in the declaration of Centennial lawyer Andrew Ghekas, with the proceeds often used to pay down or retire previous loans.
In the bank’s motion, the lender writes that since 2014, Kane has entered 24 separate lending arrangements.
Kane also borrowed over $2 million from friends and testified those debts were incurred in various cases to help him pay off mortgages, loans from other people, and gambling debts. In one instance, he purchased a $9,000 Pokemon card, he testified, as a form of payment to Tony Veltri, whom the bankruptcy petition lists as owed $320,000.
He also listed $1.5 million in gambling losses, but in its motion to block the bankruptcy petition, Centennial alleged that figure does not hold up.
Ghekas asked Kane about the use of four 2017 loans from Thrivest Specialty, which lent the hockey player cumulatively a total of $11 million, according to the lawyer’s declaration. After Kane had said he couldn’t recall what the loans were for, Ghekas followed, “It’s identified that $140,000 was to pay off to Vinny. Do you see that?”
“Yes,” Kane replied.
“And who is Vinny?”
“He’s a bookie, but that’s not like his real name, it’s just a name that was used … It was a name I was given to use to identify him.”
Kane has made over $62 million in his NHL career
Flip to the next page for how he went broke
