Boxing's biggest promoter is charged in a $21 million computer swindle
It was a bank heist bigger than the Brink's job, but the bandits used no guns or getaway cars. Rather than being fast on the draw, they had fast fingers on computer keyboards. The Wells Fargo Bank of San Francisco last week filed suit charging that a group of boxing promoters and a key accomplice inside the bank had pulled off a colossal $21 million embezzlement. The alleged sting was by far the largest computer bank fraud in history and raised some troubling questions: How could such an unlikely ring of conspicuous sports personalities so easily rob a multibillion-dollar bank? How vulnerable is the banking industry to a wave of similar computer capers now that punch cards and print-outs have replaced ledger books?
The central figure in the affair is Harold Smith, 37, who has already been dubbed "the black Jesse James" by Don King, a rival boxing impresario. Virtually unknown two years ago, Smith suddenly burst onto the boxing scene in 1979 flashing mysteriously huge sums of cash. As chairman of Muhammad Ali Professional Sports (MAPS), he became almost overnight the leading big-time fight promoter. One of the members of the MAPS board of directors is Benjamin Lewis, 47, who until three weeks ago was an operations officer at a Beverly Hills branch of Wells Fargo and had authority to use the bank's computers.
Wells Fargo contends that the two men and associates illegally withdrew a total of $21 million from that Beverly Hills branch and one in Santa Monica, where MAPS had deposits. Wells Fargo officials refuse to reveal how the scheme was accomplished, except to say that it involved elaborate computer transfers of money over at least the past year into 13 accounts controlled by MAPS.
Despite his name on the firm's front door, Muhammad Ali is not involved in the scam. But he admits that he received at least $10,000 for the use of his name for each fight. Said Ali last week: "If you're looking for something dirty or crooked, you're looking in the wrong place. Me a bank robber? Are you kidding?"
Smith and Lewis allegedly first made a series of legitimate deposits in the bank, some in excess of $500,000. That was done so that bank officials would not become suspicious later when MAPS began transferring large sums of money. Then someone working for Wells Fargo, purportedly Lewis, began to type bogus instructions into a computer terminal, perhaps transferring money from other deposits into the MAPS accounts. When Smith later started making large withdrawals, he attracted no notice. After all, he was a lord of the boxing rings and regularly paid fighters six-figure purses. Three weeks ago, however, the ruse unraveled. During some routine accounting work, a bank employee spotted serious irregularities in the records and sounded the alarm. Before the investigation picked up steam, both Smith and Lewis were gone. Smith's whereabouts were unknown at week's end, but TIME has learned that last Wednesday Lewis secretly turned himself in to the Los Angeles office of the FBI. Since then, he has been giving his version of what happened at the bank in the apparent hope of becoming a witness rather than a defendant in the case.