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Ben Moore, who co-founded Winthrop Intelligence, the college sports database service, is set to report to Denver County jail on July 1 to serve a 30-day sentence for punitive contempt.
Earlier this month, the Colorado Supreme Court denied Moore’s writ of certiorari seeking to overturn a lower court’s ruling that he be locked up after repeatedly failing to turn over records in his divorce case with now ex-wife Amy Elizabeth.
The dissolution of their marriage was one long thread in a financial tangle involving the Winthrop founders, Ben Moore and his cousin Drue Moore, as documented in a Sportico story last year. Ben Moore and Winthrop did not respond to requests for comment.
The Moore cousins founded Winthrop Intelligence in 2009. The company’s athletic department financial database service, WIN AD, quickly became a must-have for Division I schools and turned millions in profits. The subscription platform, which can cost as much as $14,000 per year, catalogs thousands of employee and vendor contracts obtained through public records requests.
But as Sportico reported, the Moore cousins subsequently became involved in a series of convoluted business ventures—along with related lawsuits and bankruptcies—which raised the eyebrows of Colorado district court Judge Lisa Arnolds, who oversaw Ben’s divorce case.
Moore told Judge Arnolds that he left Winthrop Intelligence in 2019 and no longer had any financial interest in the company. Elizabeth, however, claimed that he maintained a multimillion-dollar stake in the enterprise and was colluding with Drue Moore to conceal that asset from the marital estate. The court agreed, and in 2021 ordered Ben Moore to pay Elizabeth a $17.5 million settlement, plus monthly spousal and marital support of $21,175 for the ensuing decade.
The court determined Ben Moore’s 50% share in Winthrop was worth $9,475,000, based on the value he attributed to it on personal balance sheets he had provided a bank in an effort to secure a loan.
Throughout the divorce case, Moore claimed that he had already transferred his Winthrop stake to a Wyoming spendthrift trust whose beneficiaries were the couple’s two minor children. Elizabeth, however, provided documents that called into question when or if Moore had actually conveyed the asset. Even if he had, she contended, the trust, for which Drue Moore served as trust protector, could be terminated at any point by Drue so as to return the Winthrop holding to Ben after the divorce was finalized. (Elizabeth declined to comment for this story.)
The court adopted the determination of a special master appointed in the case, who found that the trust was “illusory and fraudulent” and “created with the specific purpose of depleting or concealing marital assets in contemplation of (the) divorce proceedings.”
With good behavior, Moore’s upcoming jail sentence could be halved. Then again, he also faces multiple remedial contempt charges from the divorce, which could tack on additional time behind bars.
The decision by Colorado’s highest court to deny cert is just the latest in a string of unfavorable rulings Moore has received in the case.
In January, a district court magistrate denied his motion to modify his maintenance and child support, after he testified his annual income, which was determined to be $1 million, had decreased by $850,000.
Apart from Ben Moore, Winthrop has undergone its own upheaval of late.
Two of the company’s long-standing employees, Kevin Barefoot and Kevin Cohen, have both departed within the last few years. Barefoot has since landed at Teamworks, the sports technology company, where he now serves as senior VP of business development. Cohen’s LinkedIn profile shows his time with Winthrop ended in January, but his current employment status is unknown. (He did not respond to a written inquiry.)
Last month, Winthrop hired a new director of marketing, according to LinkedIn.
In the company’s most recent filings with the North Carolina Secretary of State, Winthrop Intelligence listed Drue Moore’s Durham, N.C., home as its principal mailing address.
(This story has corrected the spelling of Drue Moore’s name.)