Vince McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, will pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $1.7 million for failing to disclose two settlements he made with employees while running the formerly publicly traded company.
The One settlement agreement, signed in 2019, said that McMahon would pay a former employee $3 million if she agreed not to talk about her relationship with McMahon and if the former employee gave up any possible claims against WWE and McMahon.
The second agreement, signed in 2021, said that McMahon would pay a former WWE independent contractor $7.5 million if the independent contractor agreed not to talk about her claims against McMahon and if the independent contractor gave up any of the possible claims against WWE and McMahon.
Because these payments were not disclosed, “WWE overstated its 2018 net income by approximately 8 percent and its 2021 net income by approximately 1.7 percent,” according to the SEC.
The SEC announced that McMahon had agreed to pay a $400,000 civil penalty and reimburse WWE $1,330,915.90.
In a statement on X, McMahon stated that the “case is closed.”
“Today ends nearly three years of investigation by different governmental agencies,” he informed reporters.
“There has been a lot of speculation about what the government was looking into and what the results would be. “As today’s resolution demonstrates, much of that speculation was misguided and misleading,” he said.
“In the end, there was never anything more to this than minor accounting errors involving some personal payments I made several years ago while serving as CEO of WWE. I’m overjoyed that I can finally put this behind me.”
McMahon, who is married to Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, resigned from WWE’s parent company TKO Group Holdings in 2024 after being sued by a former employee who accused him of sexual misconduct. McMahon has denied any wrongdoing in the lawsuit.
