Lance Armstrong continues to learn the hard way that sometimes honesty isn't the best policy. The sports insurance company that paid the disgraced cycling champion $12 million in bonuses for winning three of his seven Tour de France titles will file a lawsuit against the 41-year-old to get the money back.
A Dallas, Texas promotions company, SCA Promotions has already asked for the money back once, said its lawyer Jeffery Tillotson. The company fought with Armstrong over the bonuses in 2005 in an attempt to prove he had cheated to win, but ended up settling with him. Now, the impending suit names Armstrong's agent Bill Stapleton, Armstrong and Tailwind Sports, Inc. as defendants, and will seek the funds paid to Armstrong for his title wins from 2002 to 2005, as well as millions in legal costs and interest, Fox News reported. Armstrong won the Tour de France every year from 1999 to 2005.
"We made our demand for the return of the money we paid him for winning the Tour de France races where the titles were stripped," Tillotson said to CNN. "Armstrong and his legal team have not complied with that demand."
Armstrong's attorney claims the suit has no merit. Speaking to USA Today earlier in the week, his lawyer Tim Herman said Armstrong had no intention of paying the money back to SCA. "My only point is no athlete ever, to my understanding, has ever gone back and paid back his compensation. Not [New Orleans Saints coach] Sean Payton or anybody else," Herman said.
Ending over a decade of denial and rampant media speculation, Armstrong recently confessed to using steroids while winning his seven Tour de France titles in a January interview with Oprah Winfrey. Armstrong's confession came as a shocking reversal for the athlete who's insisted in public statements, interviews and court proceedings for years that he never used steroids.
Armstrong was unceremoniously stripped of his Tour de France titles in October, and banned from cycling for life after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a damning 1,000-page report accusing him of masterminding a long-running doping scheme. USADA chief executive Travis Tygart, said the drug regimen Armstrong practiced while leading the U.S. Postal Service team was, "The most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen."
SCA is now claiming in the lawsuit that Armstrong and Stapleton "lied and conspired to cheat" the company out of millions. According to Fox News, SCA's lawsuit notes Armstrong testified repeatedly under oath in the 2005 trial that he didn't use performance enhancing drugs or blood doping methods to win, activities he's recently admitted he's quite well acquainted with.
"It is time now for Mr. Armstrong to face the consequences of his actions," the lawsuit says, according to Fox News. "He admits he doped; he admits he bullied people; he admits he lied."
Mark Fabiani, Armstrong's attorney, claims SCA doesn't have a right to the money because of the settlement it reached with Armstrong in 2006, which says, "no party may challenge, appeal or attempt to set aside the arbitration award," CNN reported.
"It is clear as day the insurance company has zero right to reopen the matter," Fabiani said.
SCA insists Armstrong's continuous lies under oath stopped them from providing proof he used drugs.
"Had SCA -- or the Arbitration Panel -- known the truth, the arbitration award and settlement never would have occurred," the lawsuit says, according to Fox News.