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Former CEO of WWE, Vince McMahon, has agreed to a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after failing to disclose previous undisclosed hush money settlement agreements to the WWE Board, violating the Securities Exchange Act. The third-generation promoter must now pay a $400,000 civil penalty and reimburse WWE $1.33 million. These payments come from hush money settlements McMahon made with two former workers in 2019 and 2022.
Following the above news being released by the SEC on Friday, McMahon published a response on X, minimizing the severity of these investigations and their findings. In his statement, McMahon wrote, "The case is closed. Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies. There has been a great deal of speculation about what exactly the government was investigating and what the outcome would be. As today's resolution shows, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading. In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors with regard to some personal payments that I made several years ago while I was CEO of WWE. I'm thrilled that I can now put all this behind me."
— Vince McMahon (@VinceMcMahon) January 10, 2025
Additionally, the SEC reported that one of the undisclosed settlements required the former figurehead to pay a former employee $3 million in exchange for the former employee not disclosing their relationship with McMahon or releasing potential claims against him and WWE. The other agreement was made between a former company independent contractor and McMahon not to reveal allegations against him or release potential claims against him and WWE. The commission also noted that McMahon's not disclosing these agreements to WWE's board, legal department, accountants, financial reporting personnel, or auditor "circumvented WWE's system of internal accounting controls and caused material misstatements in the company's 2018 and 2021 financial statements." Because these payments were not disclosed by McMahon to the WWE Board, the company overstated its 2018 net income by approximately 8%, and its 2021 net income by about 1.7%. This month marks one year since McMahon resigned from the company he helped build into a worldwide sports entertainment juggernaut.

