What to know about Mark Walter

Right, and if that is true, if that is true, that elevates this story's importance, because it's not just about sports. It's about policyholders, what their expectations are of that policy, and money moving in places it ought not to move. So, that's correct, although I also want to just be clear, the idea of using the policyholders' money for other uses, it's not necessarily illegal on its face. The potential illegal action here, as far as I understand it, is that his companies didn't disclose how much of that was happening. So they disclosed that there was, like, $1.4 billion in so-called affiliated investments, which means that they were using that money from those life insurance companies to fund other investments. That was last year. And then, much more recently, in June, in a disclosure filing, the companies noted, hey, there have been federal subpoenas due to these investigations. It's the federal government, as well as the Department of Justice and the SEC. And because of that, we went and looked back. They were actually restating our filings. It wasn't $1.4 billion. It was close to $17 billion. So the issue is that they were, for some reason, not properly disclosing the crazy, wild amount of money that they were using, possibly because there were shady things going on, although, again, that's speculation.

And Ben-- and that brings us to our last question, which is, clearly, Mark Walter has liquidity issues, which is why, it appears, he's willing to sell the Lakers, and he might be willing to sell that stake in the Chelsea Football Club. It seems like he's trying to come up with as much cash as possible. Depending on what you read, you'll see different amounts that he supposedly needs. But what I have been told is that the Lakers sale was, indeed, tied to this. He is trying to raise cash. He is trying to sell the Chelsea stake. I was told that those talks have been happening from before this, but they've been revived by this. And he certainly hasn't put the Dodgers on the market. But yesterday, there was a report that said while the team isn't for sale, they certainly could accept unsolicited offers, which kind of sounds like someone saying, hey, feel free to make some offers for the Dodgers. So, yeah, it does seem like he's in need of cash.

And that's why this story matters. Ben Horney, I appreciate your time very much. Thank you.