Tommy Tuberville, the head football coach at Texas Tech University, may want to stick to his day job. As a hedge fund owner, he and his partner have been sued by investors.
The angry investors have filed a federal lawsuit in Montgomery, Ala, naming Tuberville, his partner John David Stroud and eight different investment entities as defendants. The suit had been filed in the town where Auburn University is located as Tuberville spent 10 seasons as the school’s head football coach.
The suit claims that the two men “employed devices, schemes, and artifices to defraud” seven plaintiffs from Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee, according to ESPN. It also alleged that the coach and Stroud misappropriated assets and made false client statements and fund performance reports to the detriment of their investors while they “unjustly enriched themselves.”
In the suit, the plaintiffs have expressed concern that they will see the $1.76 million invested by them since 2008 disappear. They said they have no “credible information regarding the current location and amounts of their invested funds.”
TS Capital Partners
Tuberville and Stroud owned the hedge fund firm, TS Capital Partners. They have been called equal partners; however, they did not either file state or federal income taxes in a “timely fashion” and have not registered in Alabama to conduct business.
In addition, the lawsuit contended that Tuberville was “responsible for the investment direction, capital raising, and the day-to-day oversight of business decisions of TSCM.”
In a statement by Tuberville’s attorney Vic Hayslip, he said his client:
“has never even met or spoken with most of the plaintiffs and he is acquainted minimally with the few other plaintiffs only because they were employees at TS Capital Partners, LLC. Coach Tuberville absolutely never solicited any investment from any of these or other individuals. It is important to note that Coach Tuberville himself invested significant funds and has never received any return from his own investment. Accordingly, he is hopeful the plaintiffs, who were employees, can help to provide answers as to what transpired. Coach Tuberville has cooperated with every regulatory inquiry and not a single one has asserted that he was involved in any wrongdoing. He intends to vigorously defend the allegations made against him and is confident he will be exonerated.”
Of course Tuberville has denied the allegations.
He received the following support from Stroud through his attorney:
“Given Coach Tuberville’s lack of involvement with the day-to-day operations of the company, as well as the fact that he did not solicit the plaintiffs, Mr. Stroud can only surmise that he was named in this lawsuit to garner unwarranted media attention, which has apparently succeeded.”
