The Undertaker met with Dr. James Andrews today regarding his torn bicep. Nothing is official yet but the word going around is that WWE will likely have to change the scheduled Undertaker vs. Batista Judgment Day main event. Undertaker was scheduled to have a long World Title reign, but at this point that is up in the air.
A former licensing agent for World Wrestling Entertainment and a former WWE executive were sentenced today for their roles in a $1 million kickback scheme, federal prosecutors said. Stanley Shenker, 61, of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., formerly of New Canaan, was sentenced to 33 months in prison and three years of probation. James K. Bell, 52, of Norwalk, received an eight-month sentence and three years of probation, prosecutors said. Shenker pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to defraud WWE of honest services by paying about $1 million in kickbacks to a Bell, a WWE insider. Bell pleaded guilty in 2005 to a related charge. Shenker was the sole corporate officer of Stanley Shenker and Associates Inc., which provided licensing services to WWE. He admitted that he agreed with Bell, WWE’s senior vice president of licensing and merchandising, to defraud WWE by paying kickbacks to Bell for future business and concealing the payments. During the conspiracy from 1998 to 2002, Shenker secretly paid Bell about $950,000, a fraction of commissions Shenker received from WWE, prosecutors said. Shenker and Bell disguised the payments by falsely suggesting in invoices that Bell had earned the payments by providing consulting services, prosecutors said. With the fake invoices, Shenker was able to deduct the payments on his tax returns as purported business expenses, authorities said. Shenker was ordered as part of his sentencing to pay $2.8 million in restitution to WWE. Bell was ordered to pay a $6,000 fine and more than $950,000 in restitution.
