When athletes finally make it to the professional level, they're immediately surrounded by people they don't know but are forced to trust. And young athletes in their twenties who don't have any money-management skills whatsoever are ripe for being taken advantage of. That's what happened to Carmelo Anthony, but now he's fighting back.

Melo filed a $2 million lawsuit against his former business manager, Larry W. Harmon and his firm, Larry Harmon & Associates P.A. The suit alleges that Harmon breached their contract by transferring $1.75 million of Anthony's money without his knowledge or consent to a company formed by Harmon, most of it in 2008, according to the Associated Press. There was another $265,000 invested in companies that Melo had no knowledge of or given consent to.

"I intend to aggressively represent Carmelo Anthony," Melo's attorney, Robert W. Hirsh, told the Associated Press. "The evidence which I have reviewed strongly suggests that Carmelo Anthony's former business manager plundered his assets. It is reprehensible that professional athletes are so often victimized."

The discrepancies were found after Melo fired Harmon and hired a new management company, Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman. During the firm's audit of Melo's assets, there were missing documents and transactions that were miscoded to hide where the money was going. Harmon has not commented on the allegations.



Quibian Salazar-Moreno covers the sports world for Black Voices. He's a freelance journalist based in Denver who also covers the video game industry, iPhone games world, the music industry and a bunch of other things. Follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/q_salazar