In May, a man named Troy Wilkinson sued Fliehr for failing to pay him a share of a project involving the sale of “Crown Point,” which likely related to gyms managed by Wilkinson in which Fliehr owned an interest. Fliehr admitted to owing Wilkinson $35,000 plus interest, though Wilkinson was demanding only $22,500 at the time. The two settled out of court.
2004: The federal government issued a lien on Fliehr’s property and rights to property for $874,000 owed in back taxes from 1994, ’95, ’96, ’98, and ’99. A lien is a claim on property used to secure any tax debt. It stops short of a levy, which actually takes the property to pay the debt. This was the first of the really significant sums demanded by the government.
Ward Cagle, a Charlotte resident, sued Fliehr in July for breach of contract. Cagle had loaned Fliehr $40,000 in 2000, and Fliehr had agreed to pay the money back within 70 days. Nearly four years later, it was still unpaid. He did write Cagle a check in April 2001 for $44,000 (the loan plus interest), but it bounced. The men settled out of court, with Fliehr reportedly paying Cagle $10,000 and giving him a motorcycle.
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2005: Peter Wirth, a general contractor and part-owner of Testa & Wirth, put a lien on Fliehr’s home in Charlotte due to $107,000 Fliehr and Elizabeth owed for work done on their home. “I will be able to get a list of people who say the Fliehr’s [
sic] do not pay their bills,” Wirth wrote. “I thought of them as true friends and keep doing work for them figuring we might straighten out at the end. … Mrs. Fliehr was well aware of the past due bills and smart enough to know all of the work she asked for would have to be paid for.”
Among the work Wirth’s company performed was the installation of a $9,000 cedar ceiling, a $5,000 circular staircase, and almost $4,000 in marble work. Wirth’s name would come up again before long.
Fliehr was also sued, again, by BB&T for repayment of $35,000 on a $400,000 loan they’d given him in 1998 to start “Flair with Wood,” a business that operated his Gold’s Gym in Hickory, N.C. “It seemed like it would be a home run in Hickory,” Fliehr later said. He went on to speak about his partners in the enterprise, saying, “They just robbed, stole, cheated, and left me holding the debt.” He told lawyers he couldn’t sue them because they lived in Dallas, Texas, and the DA and BB&T wouldn’t press charges. “They didn’t have to,” he said. “They had me.”
Fliehr eventually paid off the $35,000. He sold the Hickory club.
Divorce from Wife No. 2 — Elizabeth
Fliehr left his wife in February 2005 for his “safety, health and wellbeing.”
In the divorce settlement, Elizabeth accused Fliehr of “cruel and barbarous treatment,” which included all of the following: abandoning the family, failing to provide love or affection, slapping her, kicking her, choking her, biting her, pulling her hair, verbal and emotional abuse, demeaning her in public, exposing his genitalia to the parties’ friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers, excessive use of alcohol and prescription drugs, steroid use and attendant bouts of rage and violence, adultery, exposing the children to his “paramour,” crippling them financially because of his spendthrift ways, starting a fistfight with his son Reid at a wedding reception, taking his son to a strip club and serving him alcohol, opening up wrestling scars in order to appear bloody after he called the police on her, insulting her friends with racial slurs, bragging about the size of his genitalia, calling Beth fat, old, and a slut, accusing her of dressing “sexily” for other men, saying she would be “nothing in this town” without him, demanding sex, and, finally, forcing her to have sex.
She withstood it all, she noted, despite suffering from a cracked lumbar, osteopenia, and high cholesterol, and stood by Fliehr “in the midst of his nervous breakdown and frequent anxiety attacks.” Not to mention the times she played his “loyal wife” during skits, bleached his hair, picked out his wardrobe, and helped in developing the “Nature Boy” persona.
In turn, Fliehr had some accusations of his own. Elizabeth, he said, was emotionally unstable, “as verbally abusive as any person [he’d] ever known,” and physically violent. She spoke in a vile and profane manner, using the word “fukk” as a “noun, adjective, adverb, exclamatory remark and in every other way one can imagine.” She told her kids to “fukk off” and told Fliehr to “get fukked.” She projected her weaknesses and faults on others, was “mentally and physically slovenly,” and lounged around the house. She was mean-spirited, belligerent, and had nothing nice to say about anyone. Further, she refused to engage in a meaningful or intimate relationship, and even encouraged him to look outside the marriage. She would often assault him in an attempt to provoke a fight, and was compulsive in her habit of making things up about Fliehr to humiliate him.
In her original affidavit, Elizabeth gave some insight to the couple’s lifestyle and subsequent debts. She and Fliehr were accustomed to spending $5,500 per month on clothing and more than $2,000 per month on dining out, as well as $750 per month for a home lease that had expired. In Fliehr’s response, he noted that Elizabeth had requested $17,000 per month for child support, despite the fact that both children were grown and out of the house, and $950 per month in gas. These demands were curtailed in later versions of the affidavit.
The Fliehrs acquired more than $750,000 in jewelry throughout the course of their marriage. He owned 20 guns — nine Magnums, four shotguns, four rifles, one 9mm semiautomatic pistol, and two other 9mm handguns.
But the truly lasting legacy of the marriage, especially for Fliehr, would be debt. Before the settlement was finalized, the couple already owed more than a million dollars. Most of those debts stayed with Fliehr and were aggravated when Elizabeth was awarded a lump sum of $140,000 and $15,000 per month in alimony for two years (a total that declined gradually as the years went by). Fliehr would eventually owe her more than $700,000. Combined, they were also liable for $1.15 million in taxes.
Lost somewhere were the two children, particularly Reid, who Fliehr admitted had “significant difficulties in the past two years, some of which are the result of the dysfunctional family dynamic in our home.” He had been arrested during the divorce proceedings (he was bailed out by Fliehr’s lawyer), and Fliehr attributed this at least partly to his upbringing. Reid Fliehr has since been arrested for assault and battery, possession of black tar heroin, and DWI. Ashley Fliehr, too, would clash with the law. In 2008, she was arrested for kicking a police officer after her father got in a fistfight with her boyfriend.
Each child used a Yukon Denali, Jet Skis, a Sundancer boat, and a Land Rover between them.
In April 2005, the IRS began to seize Fliehr’s WWE earnings to pay back taxes.
In November, while stuck in a Thanksgiving weekend traffic jam, Fliehr was charged with assault after a motorist on I-485 in North Carolina said Fliehr grabbed him by the neck and kicked the vehicle’s door. Witnesses to the incident never showed up for court, and the case was dropped.
2006: Gary Wright of the
Charlotte Observer reported that Elizabeth’s attempt to have Fliehr held in contempt for not sharing his Carolina Panthers season tickets failed.
A company called Conbraco Industries, which manufactures water valves, filed a suit against Fliehr for repayment of a $300,000 loan. According to a source close to the situation, Conbraco provided Fliehr with the financing to open 10 Gold’s Gyms. When the gyms were sold or closed, Fliehr still owed more than $200,000. He stopped making his regular payments in April 2003.
Conbraco eventually received a favorable judgment; Fliehr owed them $185,000 plus interest from 2003 and $10,000 in attorney’s fees.
Fink’s Jewelers filed an action against Fliehr for $81,000 plus interest. Receipts show that Fliehr bought at least $76,000 of jewelry in a four-month period between November 2004 and February 2005. The case is ongoing.
On May 27, Fliehr married his third wife, Tiffany Vandemark. As his marriage to Elizabeth came to an end, he allegedly cashed in an annuity to buy a $100,000 engagement ring for Tiffany. He also bought her a Louis Vuitton bag and a Rolex watch. The wrestler Triple H was his best man.
2007: Greg Leon, who owns seven restaurants in South Carolina, loaned Fliehr $47,750 in October. According to Leon, Fliehr and Tiffany visited him at the time of the loan to decide on collateral. Fliehr offered to give him the engagement ring off Tiffany’s finger, but a female friend of Leon’s balked at the notion, and Leon reluctantly said no.
“I should have taken the ring,” he said, “but that’s just degrading.” Instead, Fliehr gave him a Rolex watch, a motorcycle, and a boat. When it became clear that the debt wouldn’t be repaid, Leon sold the Rolex. The boat and motorcycle, however, turned out to have no proper title. The boat is at a marina and the motorcycle stays in Leon’s garage. A South Carolina judge awarded Leon a full judgment against Fliehr in early 2008, but the full amount hasn’t been repaid.
When asked what it was like dealing with Fliehr, Leon said he regrets ever having done business in the first place. “I thought he was an honorable man.”
But Fliehr had been a victim, too. Earlier in the year, he and his ex-wife finally began to realize the extent of their financial mismanagement. They filed a complaint against Scott Storick (among others), a man who had been their financial advisor and had gradually milked them in a staggering multiyear process.
The Storick Episodes
In the simple version of the story, alleged in a lawsuit, Storick repeatedly convinced Elizabeth to purchase replacement life insurance policies for herself and Fliehr. He told her that it would be a better deal for both, when the truth (speaking broadly) is that life insurance policies accrue money as they age, and prematurely dumping one before it pays off is a waste of money.
The problems began in 1994. At the time, Fliehr had whole life insurance with Guardian, a low-risk policy that accrued value over time. The beneficiaries were Fliehr’s parents and Elizabeth. Scott Chamberlain, a representative of Principal Life, convinced the Fliehrs to switch their coverage to a universal life policy by showing that the premium payments would be less and the death benefit more. What he didn’t explain was that because universal life policies oftentimes fluctuate more wildly with the market, less cash is guaranteed. Also, the new policy essentially meant that the insurance company could charge higher premiums if they determined over time that Fliehr — already an aging professional wrestler who would later admit to using steroids — was increasingly likely to die.
When Fliehr and Elizabeth figured out what happened, Storick entered the equation. Also a Principal Life agent, he “exhibited great concern” about Chamberlain’s mismanagement and guided the Fliehrs into buying a Principal whole life policy. But he left out the fact that Fliehr’s original Guardian policy, with all its accrued value, had yet to expire and could still be used. Instead, he led them through the process of surrendering that policy in favor of the new one. The new annual premium was more than twice the Guardian rate, and Storick benefited from the commissions. (The policy was put in Elizabeth’s name “to prevent Mr. Fliehr from borrowing against the cash value of the policy.”)
Storick became close to the couple as time went on. He was their main financial advisor and became so trusted that “Mrs. Fliehr confided to him the combination of her home safe.”
That’s when the policy churning began. In 1998, he sold Elizabeth a life insurance policy from Guardian, his new company. When he became a Travelers agent in 1999, he convinced Beth to replace both of Fliehr’s Principal policies with Travelers universal policies. In 2000, he had Beth replace her own policy with a Travelers option.
Every time he made a switch, Storick approached Elizabeth as a friend, promising her that he’d found a better deal. Instead, Fliehr and his wife forfeited any accrued money, exposed themselves to greater risk, and lined the pockets of Storick and his successive companies.
In 2002, when Storick went to General American, it happened again. Two new policies for Fliehr.
By the time it was over and the divorce was settled, every active policy was surrendered to Elizabeth, though none of them were worth anything like their purported payout value. Fliehr was left without life insurance (at a time in his life when he was becoming less and less insurable) and with a net cash loss around $270,000.
