Floyd Mayweather, the boxer Forbes has ranked twice as the world's highest-paid athlete, says more than half a billion dollars of what he earned went to people he trusted. “It's a guy who was sitting next to me acting like he was a friend helping me clean up business and he stole $200 million,” Mayweather said on the PBD Podcast. When host Patrick Bet-David summed it up, “So $550 million stolen from you,” Mayweather answered, “Yes. And I still live a great life.”

Everything that follows is Mayweather's allegation, made on a podcast and in two lawsuits, and the people he accuses deny it.

The $350 million came up first, when Bet-David asked who had advised the young Mayweather to buy his way out of his promotional contract. “It was a guy who was sort of like a father figure, but he stole $350 million from me,” Mayweather said. “So, that's why I didn't even want to speak his name.” Asked whether he had recovered the money: “We still in litigation right now about the money.” Minutes later, he described the mechanism, and it wasn't a person emptying an account. “It's not like no one went to me and took $350 million,” he said. “What happened was Showtime. I done a deal with Showtime. Money on the back end was supposed to come to Mayweather Promotions. Supposed to come exactly to Floyd Mayweather, and they sent it to someone else's account, and that's what happened.”

That corresponds to a suit Mayweather filed in California in early 2026 against Showtime and Stephen Espinoza, the former president of Showtime Sports, claiming at least $340 million is unaccounted for out of roughly $1.2 billion in career earnings cited in the complaint, according to TheWrap's report of Feb. 3, 2026. The complaint, as reported, alleges a scheme orchestrated by Mayweather's longtime adviser in which Showtime and Espinoza helped divert money meant for Mayweather into accounts Haymon controlled; Haymon is not named as a defendant. A spokesperson for Paramount (SKYD), Showtime's owner, told TheWrap: “These baseless claims lack legal or factual merit.” Mayweather named no one as the “father figure” on the podcast.

The $200 million is a separate person and a separate case. “It's a guy who was sitting next to me acting like he was a friend helping me clean up business and he stole $200 million. So this is a completely different guy,” Mayweather said. In May 2026, he sued several former business associates seeking damages of “not less than” $175 million over what the complaint described as drained real-estate proceeds, about $100 million in jewelry and the proceeds of a private-jet sale, according to TMZ. A defendant's attorney called the suit “utterly baseless.” On Sept. 24, 2026, TMZ reported that Mayweather dropped the case without prejudice, leaving him free to refile. He has not said why.

He didn't say he is broke, and some coverage of the episode has implied it. “I'm in a great position, comfortable life, great life,” he said near the end of the sitting. Forbes estimated his 2015 income at about $300 million and his 2018 income at about $285 million, each year built on a single fight. By his own complaint's count of roughly $1.2 billion in career earnings, $550 million would be a little under half of everything the ring paid him. 

Asked why so many fighters end up telling this story, Mayweather offered a rule rather than a theory: “My main thing right now is trust but verify.” It is a long way from the version of celebrity money that travels best, the kind where Shaq's White Castle story turns a few dollars into a parable, and closer to the reason a recent study found such a durable fascination with billionaire wealth: the sums are enormous, and the people holding them say they lost track too.