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Dan Hajducky, ESPN Staff Writer
Mykalai Kontilai, the broadcast executive-turned-entrepreneur who bought Jackie Robinson’s first major and minor league contracts and used them to launch a sports memorabilia/auction business, was sentenced Wednesday night in Las Vegas to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay $6.1 million in restitution stemming from his yearslong fraud scheme.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission started investigating Kontilai for misappropriating investor funds around 2017; Kontilai forged documents that he caused to be transmitted to the SEC, lied under oath and obstructed the investigation.
In mid-2019, Kontilai left the United States amid SEC and DOJ investigations, eventually unsuccessfully claiming asylum in Russia as a whistleblower of American corruption. In April 2023, Kontilai was arrested in Germany on an Interpol red notice, held at the Stadelheim Prison in Munich for a year and was extradited back to the United States in May.
Kontilai, 55, was charged with an 18-count indictment in Nevada that included securities fraud, multiple counts of wire fraud, money laundering and failure to file tax returns in June 2020. He was also charged with six counts in Colorado, including conspiracy to obstruct proceedings, obstruction of proceedings, tampering with documents and false statements in March 2020.
He was facing a maximum sentence of more than 300 years combined.
As a condition of a plea agreement, signed by Kontilai on Sept. 7, the government dismissed the case in Colorado; on Nov. 21, Kontilai pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud while the other 17 counts were dismissed. Kontilai’s lead attorney and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Nevada could not immediately be reached for comment.
Last December, a jury in the Southern District of New York found Kontilai and his company liable for securities fraud in the civil SEC case. In March, the SEC recommended Kontilai and his company pay a combined total of nearly $50 million in penalties. That case is still unresolved; the Court still needs to rule on the SEC’s motion for remedies, which includes requests for disgorgement, civil penalties and injunctive relief.
In the SEC case, “The Holders,” a group of plaintiffs who provided a since-defaulted loan with the Robinson contracts as collateral, and the Jackie Robinson Foundation recently entered into a settlement in principle regarding the ownership of the Robinson contracts. That potential settlement is not yet final and contingent on a final written agreement.