Rudy? Rudy? Rudy?
There are few sports films as uplifting as Rudy, the 1993 movie immortalizing the real-life collegiate accomplishments of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger. Not only did Ruettiger beat the odds to become the first member of his family to attend college at the University of Notre Dame, but he also walked on to the football team -- eventually making it onto the field. Ruettiger's story extolls the value of hard work and shows the perseverance that represents the best of the American character. Years later, it seems Ruettiger's story is showing us a darker side of the American Dream.
According to Forbes, Ruettiger has agreed to pay $382,866 to resolve a claim by the Securities & Exchange Commission that he participated in the fraudulent inducing of investors to bid up the stock price of a sports drink company created in his name, Rudy Nutrition. The 63-year-old Ruettiger, along with 10 other defendants, reached that settlement on the SEC charges without formally admitting or denying them.
According to Reuters, the scheme, in which Ruettiger and 12 others were charged, grossed more than $11 million in illicit profits and involved sending investors false statements in relation to the performance and success of Rudy Nutrition, which they claimed was a direct competition of Gatorade.
The company said that "Rudy outsold Gatorade 2 to 1!" in a major U.S. Southwest test, and boasted that the drink outperformed Gatorade and Powerade by 2 to 1 in a blind taste test, the SEC said. Both claims were false, it said.
"Investors were lured into the scheme by Mr. Ruettiger's well-known, feel-good story but found themselves in a situation that did not have a happy ending," Scott Friestad, associate director of the SEC's enforcement division, said in a statement.
According to the lawsuit filed by the SEC, "Although [Rudy Nutrition] produced, marketed, and sold a sports drink in modest quantities, it primarily served as a vehicle for a pump-and-dump scheme that occurred between February and September 2008."
At the end of the film, Rudy was famously carried off the field by his teammates (footage from the movie below). Given the nature of these allegations, he may have been lucky not to be carried off to prison by federal officials at the conclusion of this failed business venture.