Promoter pleads guilty to Wonder concert fraud

Four years after the debacle of the failed, University of Hawaii-sponsored Stevie Wonder concert, the man who said he could deliver the artist for the performance admitted he lied.

North Carolina nightclub owner and self-styled concert promoter Marc Hubbard, 48, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday to wire fraud. He faces a maximum 20-year prison term at sentencing in February for scamming a UH supporter out of $50,000 and the school out of $200,000.

The university had already started selling tickets for what was supposed to be an Aug. 18, 2012, concert when a Wonder representative contacted school officials and told them Wonder didn’t authorize or know about it and did not receive any of UH’s money.

The concert was supposed to benefit the school’s financially struggling athletic department.

Hubbard said Tuesday that British citizen and Florida resident Sean Barriero had asked for his help in booking Wonder for the UH concert. He said he wasn’t able to book Wonder, but lied about it and about having direct contact with Wonder.

Barriero, 48, pleaded guilty in 2012 to having UH’s $200,000 wire-transferred to his Florida bank account from UH’s bank account through fraud and agreed to testify against Hubbard. According to a November 2012 indictment against Barriero and Hubbard, Barriero sent $120,000 of UH’s money to Hubbard, $11,250 to a promoter in Spain and kept the rest for himself.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on the same day as Hubbard and faces a maximum 10-year prison term.

In the wake of the concert debacle, UH athletic director Jim Donovan lost his job, and state lawmakers grilled top university officials in public hearings about the failed concert, Donovan’s retention and reassignment to a position in the UH chancellor’s office, and the school’s related legal expenses.

Donovan later took a job as athletic director at California State University, Fullerton.

In 2013, M.R.C. Greenwood stepped down from her post as UH president. Her successor replaced many of the university’s senior administrators, including the school’s top legal adviser, chief financial officer and UH-Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple.

Tuesday wasn’t the first time Hubbard admitted to taking money from people for concerts by big-name performers. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia in June to charges that he and a co-defendant lied and presented phony financial documents to trick three people into giving them more than $2.1 million between 2008 and 2010.

The money was supposed to be investments in concerts by Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne and Beyonce. Hubbard promised his victims 15 to 30 percent rates of return and falsely told one victim he had successfully co-promoted a 2009 Jay Z concert. He also showed the victim a fake ticket sales audit for a November 2009 concert by R. Kelly.

His sentencing in the Philadelphia case is scheduled for next week.

In return for his guilty plea in the UH case, the government agreed to ask the judge to let him serve his Hawaii sentence at the same time as he serves his Philadelphia sentence.

Hubbard is already on probation in a South Carolina state case; he plead guilty in June to a breach-of-trust charge involving one of the victims in the Philadelphia federal case, for spending money the victim gave him on personal expenses instead of investing it in concert promotion as he promised.