Lance Armstrong Facing $100 Million Fraud Lawsuit

Summary: The government wants Lance Armstrong to pay back endorsement money from the U.S. Postal Service.

Lance Armstrong shocked his fans when it was discovered that he had been doping in order to win his cycling awards. The once-inspirational athlete fell from grace, and now he may lose $100 million, according to Reuters.

On Monday, a federal judge opened the door for a government lawsuit to peddle its way to trial. The U.S. Department of Justice wants to sue Armstrong for $100 million. They said that the athlete defrauded the government by accepting millions in sponsorship money from the U.S. Postal Service when he was doping to earn his Tour de France victories.

“Because the government has offered evidence that Armstrong withheld information about the team’s doping and use of PEDs and that the anti-doping provisions of the sponsorship agreements were material to USPS’s decision to continue the sponsorship and make payments under the agreements, the Court must deny Armstrong’s motion for summary judgment on this issue,” Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in his ruling.

USPS had given Armstrong $32.3 million and calculated the damages as three times the amount of what was paid.

In 2012, Armstrong was stripped of his seven cycling titles after a government agency accused him of engineering a sophisticated drugging system in order to gain an unfair advantage over his opponents. Armstrong had initially denied the charges, but in 2013, he admitted to talk show host Oprah Winfrey that he had been using performance-enhancing drugs all along.

The DOJ first came on board with this case in February 2013. Armstrong said that the USPS’s benefits outweighed the endorsement money, and he had asked to have the case decided by a judge in April 2016. His request was denied.

Armstrong and the DOJ did not offer comments for this story.

Source: Reuters

Photo courtesy of The New York Times