Tyson’s purse KO’d
Adviser pleads guilty, gets 33 months in jail
THIS round, it’s Mike Tyson who has been sucker-punched. The former heavyweight champ, basking in the glow of his successful one-man show in Las Vegas, is still licking his wounds after his ex-financial adviser, Brian J. Ourand, picked the champ’s pockets clean.
Ourand, formerly of Live Nation-owned SFX Financial Advisory Management Enterprises, pleaded guilty in federal court in February to one count of wire fraud and was sentenced last week to 33 months in prison and agreed to pay back more than $1 million in the celebrity scheme.
Ourand reportedly raked in $265,000 alone on unauthorized ATM withdrawals, debit and credit card fraud, along with more of Tyson’s loot.
And it stung like a bee, according to our John Aidan Byrne. Tyson was once so tight with Ourand that the champ invited the moneyman to his wedding to Lakiha Spicer.
The theft was part of a brazen scheme by Ourand that also ensnared basketball stars Glen Rice, Dikembe Mutombo and other pro athletes, according to US Attorney Channing Phillips and Andrew Vale, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s DC field office.
At the sentencing, Judge Tanya Chutkan also ordered Ourand to pay $1,002,390 in restitution, and levied the same sum as a forfeiture money judgment.
In his plea deal, Ourand admitted to living it up with tanning sessions, dental work, gambling, hotels, golf fees and other purchases, according to a plea to one count of wire fraud.
Social study
Gigi Hadid (pictured) may have helped Tommy Hilfiger sell more bomber jackets, sweaters and sailor outfits, but their 18-month partnership has also been good for the super model, Hilfiger pointed out last week at a retail conference.
The designer said Hadid’s social media following has grown exponentially “since joining the brand.” Hadid has more than 48 million followers on Twitter, Instagramgram and Facebook today — more thanan twice the number she had beforere their collaboration.
Hilfiger is also leading the digital charge when it comes to invento-ory-less showrooms. “We don’t have showrooms packed with clothes anymore,” Hilfiger told our Lisa Fickenscher. Thirteen of his 40 showrooms across the world are equipped with Imax theater-like technology and iPads that show off his collections to buyers.
Who needs a bunch of clothing racks that clog up space, any-yway?
Amazon’s pal
Amazon is finding a friend at the Federal Trade Commission, even though founder Jeff Bezos s is not thought to be on good terms with President Trump.
Interim FTC Chair Maureen Ohlhausen, speaking last week at a Georgetown Law School conference, said the agency should not be “inter-interventionist” when monitoring the digital economy.
There have been public calls for the FTC to examine Amazon becauseuse it is becoming too dominant in too manymany ar-areas.
“She’s saying it is not our role toto say a company is becoming too big, but only to examine them if they are misusing their monopolistic power,” a DC lawyer who knows Ohlhausen said.
The FTC in August cleared Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods Markets.ets.
What’s in the future for Amazon? Well, Trump is expected to soon nominate Paul, Weiss, Rifkind lawyer Joseph Simons to be FTC chair, and the expectation is his views will be similar to the current chair’s, the source said.
Chaos
Sotheby's will be hosting chaos next month. The famed auction house will be the site of former hedge fonder Richard Hurowitz's inaugural conference, "Oppor-tunities from Chaos," on Oct. 17. The event, which will include economist Nouriel Roubini, Saba Capital's Boaz Wein-stein and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and others from the world of fmance, politics and art, prom-ises to be "Davos meets the Aspen Ideas Forum." "Often people are in silos... but the world has become much more interdisciplinary," Hurowitz, who sold his hedge fund Octavian Advisors to private equity firm TPG in 2013, told our Carleton English. That means attendees can expect wide-ranging discussions on anything from giraffe conservation to gold. Hurowitz predicts that the panel be-tween Roubini — also known as Dr. Doom — and gold bull Ran Grant will be a bit of showdown, noting their "dia-metrically opposed views" on the com-modity. Hurowitz founded The Octavian Re-port, a quarterly publication featuring commentary on art, finance and politics, three years ago. "I found myself having to self-curate a lot of info," Hurowitz said, adding later that the conference is a way to "bring that to life."