A number of former NHLers suffered millions in losses at the hands of an advisor and one of those hockey legends has figured out why players are so often victimized.
Bryan Berard, who played 11 seasons in the NHL, including two with Toronto, is speaking about why criminal advisors often target the boys on the ice.
“He (Berard’s former advisor) knew when guys were playing hockey, we were concentrating on hockey,” said the former rearguard now the director of sports and entertainment for WhaleRock Point Partners LLC. “It totally devastated my earnings. When it was all gone, it was all gone.”
He’s working hard to make sure other athletes and entertainers don’t suffer the same fate as he did.
“I’m working in finance now,” said Berard. “It’s almost like I am trying to recruit the younger players and really help them so they don’t have to go through anything like I did with Kenner.”
The hockey legend was one of a total of 12 former and current NHL players who were victims of an 11-year fraud that saw them lose $10 million in a string of investments that lined the pockets of financial advisor Phillip A. Kenner and his partner, race car driver Tommy C. Constantine.
“I was over playing in Russia in 2009, and I started paying more attention, which I probably should have been doing earlier in my career, but I started paying attention to a lot of deals to do with Kenner and things weren’t matching up,” said Berard. “I started paying attention to a lot of the operating deals we were in, and Kenner had more equity than a lot of the players that I knew had hard cash in the deals. Kenner had a larger piece of the pie than he should have.”
Berard, along with another client, retired police chief John Kaiser, went to work collecting evidence against the pair of fraudsters which led to an FBI investigation and ultimately charges being laid on November 13, 2013.
Last week Kenner and Constantine were convicted on several charges and face up to 20 years in prison.
Berard, who won the Bill Masterson Memorial Trophy in 2003-2004 for overcoming what should have been a career-ending injury, is the definition of perseverance and dedication.
See more: Advisor conned hockey vets
