In case you’ve been living under a rock, or don’t care about such things, the biggest scandal in the sports world right now is whether Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning used human growth hormone (also called HGH) when he was rehabbing from a neck injury in 2011.
The scandal stems from a report from Al Jazeera, which claimed that a former British hurdler named Liam Collins went undercover to pull back the curtain on supposedly rampant HGH use among American professional athletes.
The scandal roped in Manning by claiming that he had HGH delivered to his wife, which he then may or may not have used himself.
Manning has vociferously denied these claims, telling ESPN: "It stings me, whoever this guy is, to insinuate that I cut corners, I broke NFL rules in order to get healthy," Manning said, reiterating that he did not use HGH. "It's a joke. It's a freaking joke."
The reports initial claims now rest on somewhat shaky ground, especially since Collins’ main source on the story, Charlie Sly, may not have even worked at the clinic in question during the time that HGH was supposedly sent to Manning’s wife.
And more about Collins’ past is also coming to light as well, including getting into some legal trouble in England for real estate fraud.
Collins’ criminal real estate history was initially spotted by Business Insider in an article in which Sly claims he made up the entire story about Manning and other athletes using HGH to test whether Collins actually knew what he was talking about.
The Business Insider article provides some more details on Collins’ past, including a stint on “Britain’s Got Talent,” and an accusation of real estate fraud.
According to a report from the website ThisIsMoney.co.uk (cited by Business Insider), Collins was banned from directing a company in England for 14 years and ordered to repay millions of dollars after being accused of real estate fraud.
Here’s a little more on Collins’ real estate history from ThisIsMoney.co.uk:
Liam James Collins gained national fame as a semi-finalist on Britain's Got Talent in 2009 as part of the dance duo ‘Faces of Disco’ – the 34-year-old and his cousin and business partner David Bone amassed £874,000 from unsuspecting members of the public.
Investors were promised returns as high as 10 per cent on their investment in the 'Collins and Bone' property scheme, which purported to make money out of buying and renovating houses to rent to students.
Collins and his partner were apparently deep in debt and devised the scheme to pay back their creditors.
Again from the ThisIsMoney.co.uk report:
Ken Beasley of the Insolvency Service’s Public Interest Unit said: ‘At a time when they were already heavily indebted Collins and Bone took substantial sums of money from members of the public with the promise of high returns on property investments with no reasonable expectation that they would ever be able to meet the repayments promised to investors.'
And click here to read more about Collins’ real estate past.
