Vince McMahon Reaches Settlement Over Hush Money Payments
01/10/2025 01:56 PM
It's been some time since former WWE CEO Vince McMahon finally severed his ties to the company he built. But he's been dealing with some legal issues and finally seems to have reached a conclusion in one of his biggest ones.
According to the Associated Press via ESPN, McMahon has reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over an alleged failure to disclose hush money payments with several women to avoid them making harmful claims to the public.
The SEC announced that McMahon, while not admitting or denying its findings, has agreed to cease-and-desist from violating certain provisions, pay a $400,000 civil penalty and reimburse WWE approximately $1.3 million. The grand total for McMahon comes out to $1.7 million in payouts between the SEC and the WWE.
In a statement, McMahon said that the resolution shows that "much of that speculation was misguided and misleading." He said that the entire thing boiled down to "minor accounting errors" made while he was the WWE CEO.
"Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies. There has been a great deal of speculation about what exactly the government was investigating and what the outcome would be. As today's resolution shows, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading," McMahon said in a statement. "In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE. I'm thrilled that I can now put all this behind me."
McMahon stepped down as WWE's CEO in 2022 after spending decades in the role and left the WWE's parent company in 2024 after being accused of sexual misconduct in a federal lawsuit.
He bought WWE from his father in 1982 and transformed it into the largest professional wrestling organization in the world.
Related: Vince McMahon Resigns Executive Role, Board Seat Amid Disturbing Allegations
