Just call him the 2.1 Million Dollar Man: Brett DiBiase, son of WWE Hall Of Famer Ted DiBiase and brother of former WWE Tag Team Champion Ted DiBiase Jr., was arrested last week in Mississippi following the discovery of a massive embezzlement scandal. DiBiase, also a former WWE-contracted talent in Florida Championship Wrestling where he once held the FCW Tag Team Championship with Curtis Axel, was one of six people arrested in the operation.
An excerpt from the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor’s press release on the arrests elaborates:
Auditors concluded, after an eight-month investigation, that the accused conspired to illegally obtain millions in public funds from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program administered by DHS. Defendants used a variety of business entities and schemes to defraud the taxpayers.
“The funds that were illegally obtained in this case were intended to help the poorest among us. The funds were instead taken by a group of influential people for their own benefit, and the scheme is massive. It ends today,” said Auditor White.
[John] Davis and [Latimer] Smith stand accused of fraudulently manufacturing documents to enrich Brett DiBiase using TANF money. Davis and Smith created invoices to pay DiBiase TANF funds for teaching classes about drug abuse, but DiBiase was in a luxury rehabilitation facility for his own drug use in California at the time and did not perform the services. Davis and Smith created documents and arranged payment knowing DiBiase was not performing the work he was hired to perform.”
Nancy New and her son, Zach New, stand accused of using the News’ non-profit, MCEC, to pay for DiBiase’s drug treatment using TANF funds. At Davis’ direction, MCEC used TANF money received from DHS to pay for DiBiase’s opioid treatment at the Rise in Malibu facility. The documentation submitted by the News claimed this was to pay DiBiase for conducting training classes that never, in fact, took place.
This week, the plot thickens: According to the Clarion-Ledger, DiBiase funneled $2.1 million of Mississippi taxpayer money to his father’s nonprofit, Heart Of David Ministry, over the span of the past three years. As Wrestling Inc. reports:
“Heart of David” had meager funds for three months until Ted’s son, Brett DiBiase, was hired as the deputy administrator at the Mississippi Department of Human Services. The payments to “Heart of David” began in May 2017 and continued until the current fiscal year. The non-profit received as much as $900,000 one year from the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Brett DiBiase and his cohorts face hundreds of years in prison if found guilty on all current embezzlement charges, though this new revelation of DiBiase shunting off money to his dad’s ministry could certainly add more charges on top of it — and possibly get the Million Dollar Man in hot water, too. We’ll keep you posted on this developing story.
