In an interview that aired last night on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Lance Armstrong confessed that he doped. That confession, added to mountains of other evidence, could cost him millions of dollars. There are three groups of people he may owe money to:
1. SCA Promotions
SCA is a company that underwrote millions of dollars of bonuses that Lance received for winning the Tour de France. Now that he's been stripped of those titles — they want their money back.
SCA had already planned to sue Armstrong before his Oprah interview. Last night, the company's lawyer, Jeff Dorough, was watching for specific phrases that could make their case easier to win. Dorough says the company wanted Armstrong to say he hid the doping, and last night he did. He was also watching to see if Lance would implicate anyone else, but that didn't happen.
2. The U.S. Postal Service
The U.S. Postal Service spent about $30 million sponsoring Lance Armstrong's cycling team, according to ESPN and the Wall Street Journal.
A former teammate of Armstrong's, Floyd Landis, has filed a whistle-blower lawsuit on behalf of the U.S. government, alleging that Armstrong was the architect of a massive doping operation. If the Justice Department decides to join Landis in the suit, the amount of money they could win would triple-- up to $90 million. The Justice Department has not made public decision about whether to join the suit.
3. People he sued and threatened
Over the years, many people publicly accused Armstrong of doping. He sued and threatened many of those people and, in one case, in one case, he actually won damages from a newspaper for printing what he now admits is the truth. Now that paper has said they want their money back.
Forbes has estimated Armstrong's net worth at over $100 million.
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