Floyd Landis, the gift that keeps on giving. Now a federal grand jury has become interested in his fabled Floyd Fairness Fund, which can’t be good news for anyone save his lawyers.
Seems the head of the fraud division in San Diego, assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Halpern, is himself a bike racer, so he may have a little more staying power than that Novitzky fella, who plays hoops.
You can’t get blood out of a turnip, but you can sure fuck up the turnip in the process.
Tags: Floyd Landis
April 26, 2012 at 10:16 am |
If anything comes of it does that mean I get my ten bucks back?
April 26, 2012 at 10:22 am |
Probably charge you with aiding and abetting.
April 26, 2012 at 5:55 pm
with my luck you’re right. I still feel bad about sending the guy the money though. I am a mechanic and worked with him once when he raced MTBs and I really believed in his innocence.
April 28, 2012 at 7:08 am |
Article in the Atlantic last week on why athletes don’t rat on each other. Pretty slim, only touched the surface. But it’s an angle we don’t see enough of.
April 26, 2012 at 1:58 pm |
Interesting situation. Is Floyd no longer figuring on getting any whistleblower loot? Since the BigTex FDA investigation died is that the end of any possible payment? The wife attended a follow-up conference on the Landis fiasco at Pepperdine and it seemed that the REAL money put into the “fairness fund” was from the lawyers trying to use Floyd to beat the anti-doping system, the money contributed by the naive fans was not-so-much. In the end it would be sad to me to see the guy get whacked again after all the crap he’s been through already, being used and abused by plenty of folks starting with BigTex and Co. At this point it’s hard to say he profited from his “crimes” in any substantial way, unlike some others I could name……..
April 26, 2012 at 9:19 pm |
Floyd has spent so much time under the bus that you can tell the bus’s tire change interval looking at his jersey. He helped throw himself there, but jezus, enough is enough. Sounds like the prosecutor is going after low hanging fruit rather than worrying about the big fish.
April 26, 2012 at 10:20 pm
Khal,
You are talking about lawyers, right?
Low hanging fruit is all that they can reach since the higher up fruit requires intelligence, acumen and savvy behavior to harvest. These are the same creatures who made “lawyer tabs” a modern bike option whether you want them or not.
In other words: they would be the only ones who would think that this is a ‘good idea’ since the rest of us KNOW where it is going. Kind of like the Banesto TTT in the early 90s.
April 26, 2012 at 10:04 pm |
There has to be more to this than meets the eye. Popping Floyd at this point would be like shooting puppies at the pound; not exactly sporting.
April 27, 2012 at 8:57 am
You don’t suppose its a back door to TCWSNBN?
April 28, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Boy, I’m with Patrick, there’s got to be more, but what? He’s opened up like a tulip in the spring already, so this surely can’t be a ploy to get him to talk. Get even? For what? He did all he could to hand over Big Tex’ head on a platter. Hmmm, okay time for conspiracy therories. Get even indeed. The District Attorney doing the prosecution is bought and paid for by TCWSNBN. Or he knows who shot JFK (it was Big Tex) and is holding out because the Texas Mafia is threatening him, so the feds are increasing the pressure. Or… hmmm, time for more medication.
April 28, 2012 at 7:44 pm
Maybe Radio Shackstrong ginned up the Flandis inquiry to distract fans and sponsors from the team’s appalling suckitude during the classics and the thunderous beating awaiting them at the Giro with Schleck the Lesser riding point.
April 27, 2012 at 8:13 am |
Poor Floyd is ending up the poster boy on how not to dope. Watching him go past everyone that day in France like he was being chased by someone with a gun was something to see. It would have been spectacular had it been real. Too bad.
April 27, 2012 at 9:47 am |
Terrible waste of the justice system. Resources should be directed toward international sex-trafficking of children, minors and adults, for example.
April 27, 2012 at 2:31 pm |
While not defending those type of perverts I think it’s dangerous to say this or that is a “waste of the justice system” as that’s what the fanboys of BigTex said in defense of their man. I would like to see the Justice Department take a much harder look at financial crimes that enrich their crooked masterminds at the expense of so many ordinary shlubs….but I won’t be holding my breath!
April 27, 2012 at 6:49 pm
Larry…you know what they said about low hanging fruit. The Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, BoFAs, etc are all higher on the tree…thus the “nothing to see here, move along”.
April 28, 2012 at 3:26 am |
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. The “too big to fail”, the “too powerful to sue”, etc. The fatcats continue to get away with all kinds of crap while the little guys get nabbed and pay the price — all to make the regular folks believe the system is fair and works in their favor.