By Mark Vester
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, after a 20-month FBI sting operation, a 2004 raid of the Top Rank office in Las Vegas and a further investigation that lasted over 2 years, the probe of Top Rank is finally over and not a single person in the company was given an indictment. There were numerous allegations of fixed fights and other illegal practices that the FBI was never able to confirm during the long probe into the company.
An NYC detective Frank Manzione who went by the name Big Frankie, went undercover in the boxing world for 20 months in order to pile up evidence of alleged wrongdoing within the company. Due to Manzione's investigation, the Las Vegas office of Top Rank was raided in January 2004 as the FBI took boxes of documents and computer harddrives to find information to further help them build a case. After 29 months, the FBI returned the confiscated materials back to the Las Vegas office of Top Rank and told the company that their investigation was over.
"Competitors will always use something like that against you. They would tell people, 'You don't want to do business with them because they are going to be indicted.' All's well that ends well. I'm not bitter, not angry. In any other country, if the government spent this much time and this much effort, they would find something or create something," said Top Rank head Bob Arum to the LA Times.
