Abby Wambach plans to exit drug company linked to Brett Favre welfare fraud case
American soccer legend Abby Wambach told ESPN that she intends to fully divest herself from a concussion drug company that is backed by Brett Favre and is at the center of a Mississippi welfare fraud case.
Wambach, a World Cup winner and two-time gold medalist who is in the National Soccer Hall of Fame, was a member of the sports advisory board for Odyssey Health, a drug company that has said it is developing a nasal spray designed to treat concussions. Odyssey Health's top investor is Favre.
According to a civil lawsuit filed by the state of Mississippi, $2.1 million that was supposed to go to welfare recipients was instead directed to Odyssey Health. The company, previously known as Prevacus, was linked to the fraud case when arrests were first made in February 2020, with many of the case's details reported by nonprofit news organization Mississippi Today.
In an email Thursday, Wambach indicated it wasn't until she was contacted by ESPN earlier in the day that she first became aware of «disturbing information» about Odyssey Health. She said she had supported the company as part of a personal effort to lessen the impact of concussion-related injuries.
«Minutes after learning this new information, I initiated the process to immediately and fully divest myself from any involvement — financial and otherwise — with Prevacus/Odyssey Health Inc., a process that I insisted be complete by end of day today,» Wambach said.
By Thursday afternoon, Wambach's connection to the company had been scrubbed from its website.
Wambach did not respond to requests for an interview or respond to questions about what her role on the advisory board had entailed or what financial stake she had in the company.
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