When Kimberlie Reed met Michael Hyatt on Tinder in 2017, she was in awe.
On their first date, after several months of exchanging messages, they sat at a high top table near the bar at a Sacramento BJ’s. Mr. Hyatt, his head shaved and wearing a crisp button-down shirt, regaled her with stories of representing his native Jamaica in table tennis at the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games.
He was magnetic and accomplished and, to her mind, it made perfect sense that in the June 2014 issue of USA Table Tennis’s monthly magazine he had been called “the Usain Bolt of Table Tennis.”
Over the ensuing months, the two began a romantic relationship. Mr. Hyatt spoke to Ms. Reed at length about what he said was his passion project: PongNation, a table tennis club akin to SPIN, the Susan Sarandon-connected franchise started in New York in 2009. He walked Ms. Reed through an empty storefront in an industrial pocket of nearby Roseville that he said would soon be PongNation’s home, describing franchise agreements he had reached with Puma and Starbucks. By co-signing business loans, opening credit cards and adding some of her own cash, she, too, became part of it.
“Next thing I know,” Ms. Reed said, “he fled the country.”
Dozens of interviews, court records, text messages, financial statements and other documents reviewed by The New York Times show that Ms. Reed was hardly the first person to believe in Mr. Hyatt and, soon after, regret it.
Efforts to reach Mr. Hyatt, 54, for comment were unsuccessful. Various cellphone and WhatsApp numbers associated with him in the United States and abroad have been disconnected. He did not reply to messages sent to three different email addresses and various social media profiles he has used over the years.
His brother, when reached via Facebook Messenger, replied: “Zelle me 2k and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” (The New York Times does not pay people it interviews for news articles.) Mr. Hyatt’s mother, when reached by phone in August, said that she hadn’t spoken to him in “years” before remarking, “I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”
Then she hung up.
A Reputation Begins to Tarnish
Many of Mr. Hyatt’s personal and business relationships were built on what people did not know about him.
Despite the impression he may have given, Mr. Hyatt’s Olympic career was not illustrious. He finished 33rd in men’s singles at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, and 49th at the 1996 Atlanta Games, along with a 25th-place finish in men’s doubles.
But he remained a known, and liked, presence in the niche, close-knit table tennis community, where the vast majority of competitors work multiple jobs while pursuing their athletic dreams. In the 1990s, the circuit involved tournaments at recreation centers and church basements, and a hodgepodge of car-pooling and last-minute lodging. Some athletes described how Mr. Hyatt would be the first to lend a couch for crashing during tournaments or paddles or apparel.
Feelings shifted in February 1996, when Mr. Hyatt hosted a tournament in Georgia and failed to pay $15,000 in prize money, Christian Lillieroos, a coach who knew Mr. Hyatt, said.
“It came as a big surprise to me,” Mr. Lillieroos said. “I couldn’t believe he was doing it.”
Mr. Hyatt ran into other trouble. He was not permitted to travel with the Jamaican national team in 1999 “due to poor disciplinary records,” according to a report in the Jamaican publication The Gleaner, which noted that he had been sent home early from the Central American and Caribbean Games “because of misbehavior.”
Mr. Hyatt kept busy in other ways. He started a company called EJAM IT Solutions in December 1998, according to a registration with the state of Georgia, where he had put down roots.
Four years later, at least five schools in Jamaica had ordered 150 computers from EJAM and made down payments of several thousand dollars. But, according to a report in The Gleaner, the computers never arrived, and Mr. Hyatt was nowhere to be found.
In 2003, Mr. Hyatt was charged in Cobb County, Ga., with a felony after being accused of floating a bad check. In December 2003, Mr. Hyatt also faced a charge of fraud, according to court records. That year, the bad check case was dismissed and he paid a restitution tied to the fraud case.
In 2005, Mr. Hyatt filed a change of address with the court. He was moving to California.
‘He’s an Empty Shell’
In Northern California, Mr. Hyatt met women online, told them of his Olympic past, then began to pitch them his idea for a ping pong facility. Some declined to invest, while others took out several thousand dollars in loans or co-signed loans with Mr. Hyatt, according to interviews with women, friends and colleagues who knew him at the time.
Sandra Blanco met Mr. Hyatt on a dating website in 2005. “I was very impressed with him,” Ms. Blanco said. “I’m from Nicaragua, we had some cultural similarities and bonded really well.”
Ms. Blanco said that she often saw Mr. Hyatt on the phone and on his laptop. “He always seemed like he was working two jobs,” she said. He often paid for meals, movies, groceries and other shared expenses. “I didn’t lose a dollar with Michael,” she said of their early courtship.
After about a year, they moved in together. But six months after she gave birth to their daughter in 2007, and after two years together, Ms. Blanco and Mr. Hyatt separated.
Ms. Blanco was granted full custody of their daughter. Mr. Hyatt was ordered to pay monthly child support payments of $1,200, which he did until 2017. For reasons that are unclear to Ms. Blanco, the payments stopped and resumed only in fall 2023. The payments are made via direct deposit, and neither she nor her daughter have had any contact with Mr. Hyatt in more than a decade.
“Lots of things are missing from him,” Ms. Blanco said. “He’s an empty shell.”
In 2015, Mr. Hyatt was barred permanently from USA Table Tennis because of “sexual misconduct,” according to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the nonprofit organization directed by Congress to handle accusations of misconduct in Olympic and Paralympic sports. (As a matter of policy, SafeSport does not disclose details of its cases.)
Yet Mr. Hyatt continued to be involved in the sport, competing for Jamaica in several tournaments, including the world championships in Malaysia in 2016. In an Instagram post, he celebrated Jamaica for winning a bronze medal. However, the team finished 75th.
On Dec. 30, 2016, he announced his retirement from the sport.
“Life changes,” he said at the time. “And you have different motivations.”
His relationship with Ms. Blanco over, Mr. Hyatt kept dating. Jodi Cummins was working two jobs and driving an Uber to make ends meet when Mr. Hyatt took her on a first date to an elegant dinner in Napa. A single mother living in Sacramento, Ms. Cummins was a “bit cautious” when they began seeing each other but was moved one weekend when Mr. Hyatt took her to Trader Joe’s and picked up the bill and filled the gas tank of her car. “He was flashy but generous,” she said.
Soon, Mr. Hyatt told her that he was looking at homes closer to her in Sacramento. “I was really excited,” she said.
DeMylon Vinson, a real estate broker, gave Mr. Hyatt and Ms. Cummins a tour of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, 1,873-square-foot home in Elk Grove, south of Sacramento. Ms. Cummins thought that she was looking at a home Mr. Hyatt alone would inhabit but, without her knowledge, Mr. Hyatt said in emails to Mr. Vinson that he and Ms. Cummins would be moving in together.
Despite those messages, Mr. Vinson said that Mr. Hyatt then “just disappeared.”
One night around the same time, Mr. Hyatt, who was staying with Ms. Cummins because he said a home he was renting nearby wasn’t ready to move into, didn’t return home when she was expecting him. She learned that Mr. Hyatt had been arrested, apparently over a rental car he had not returned. In going through his paperwork, text messages and communications with others, she learned that Mr. Hyatt had been fired from his job and hadn’t paid his rent. He was also receiving unemployment payments and an EBT card at her address and pursuing other women online.
A statement Ms. Cummins reviewed for a credit card that she said had been taken out in her name without her knowledge revealed that, on at least one occasion, he had gone to the movies instead of an office job during the day.
She tried to end things. She filed a restraining order, presenting a judge with evidence that included a text message from Mr. Hyatt threatening to kill her cat. She, her son and the cat moved in with a family member.
Ms. Cummins soon returned to her house and found Mr. Hyatt there. She called the police. “I stood on the front lawn and watched the sheriff carry him out,” she said. “It was a nightmare.”
Mr. Vinson, who was unaware of what had been transpiring, said he was surprised when several months later, Mr. Hyatt reached out to say he was looking for a house again, this time with his new partner, Elizabeth Toro, a blackjack dealer who also lived in the Sacramento area.
Ms. Toro and Mr. Hyatt had their first date in February 2018, and “he was over the top right away from the beginning,” she said. He drove an Escalade and always wore nice suits, shirts and pants. When she looked him up after the first date, his Olympian past checked out and he seemed well-traveled.
Two weeks in, though, “he did weird things,” Ms. Toro said. Once again, he moved aggressively, first trying to move in with her — which she resisted, even as he showed up with a suitcase and a box of sports memorabilia — and then quickly pitching a chance to invest in his business.
They met with Mr. Vinson and walked through a home. Afterward, Mr. Hyatt took Ms. Toro to a furniture store and asked if she would apply for a line of credit for him. That request was too much for Ms. Toro. “Then it all unravels,” she said of their relationship.
Shortly after that, she said, she received a statement for a credit card he had apparently taken out in her name without her knowledge.
In Mr. Vinson’s real estate office a few miles away, he received an application for the home with all of Ms. Toro’s personal details. “We approved it based on her,” he said.
Ms. Toro said she had no idea.
In April 2018, a check from Mr. Hyatt to Mr. Vinson for a lease option for the home bounced. He subsequently took Mr. Hyatt to small claims court.
“I learned the hard way,” Mr. Vinson said. “Never take a personal check.”
By then Mr. Hyatt had a new girlfriend, one who hadn’t seen the court dockets: Kimberlie Reed.
‘Your Boyfriend Will Be a Millionaire’
In the summer of 2018, Mr. Hyatt told Ms. Reed that he was eagerly anticipating a $108,000 federal loan that would help launch PongNation. Soon, he said, he could focus on his table tennis endeavor full time.
“We’ll do well over the $1.4 million in revenue I’m projecting for Aug to Dec 2018 and make over $700K in profit as well,” Mr. Hyatt texted her.
Mr. Hyatt wanted to stage a tournament in July 2018 at a local venue, and in the weeks leading up to the event, she said he told her that “1,000 people” were signed up.
Mr. Hyatt asked her to help get the tournament going, she said. Mr. Hyatt said that he had an investor who wanted to pay $1.2 million for a 10 percent stake in the company. But the investor, he said, needed to see that Mr. Hyatt had $100,000 in cash — and that the tournament was successful.
Mr. Hyatt and Ms. Reed then went to a bank to open a business line of credit in both of their names. They did the same at another bank.
Mr. Hyatt and Ms. Reed visited a CarMax, where she said she signed for a loan for a $29,000 Toyota Highlander. Mr. Hyatt handed over a check for $2,000 and said the car would be used for business purposes, Ms. Reed said. (The check bounced.)
On Aug. 4, 2018, Ms. Reed arrived at the venue for the tournament and found only a handful of athletes in attendance.
“It was a joke,” she said. Mr. Hyatt returned to her home that night despondent and went to bed.
The next morning, “it was like it hadn’t happened,” Ms. Reed said. He posted on Facebook that the tournament was a success.
Ms. Reed began receiving statements for other credit cards opened using her personal information that she had not signed up for, including a Capital One card that was maxed out for over $10,000. An American Express gold card in Ms. Reed’s name had more than $20,000 worth of charges on it.
When Ms. Reed confronted Mr. Hyatt, he continued to reassure her that investor funds were coming soon. “I think we’ll get $100K tomorrow afternoon and $400K next Thursday or Friday,” he messaged Ms. Reed on Aug. 6.
On Aug. 15, Mr. Hyatt texted Ms. Reed, “I have a check for $100K and a signed agreement in place.” But he dodged her efforts to meet in person. In their back and forth that week, he said “your boyfriend will be a millionaire by years end. PongNation will do about $16M in 2019 and make over $4M in profit. Love your man, support him, let him come to you.”
Despite the bravado, Mr. Hyatt’s world began to cave in on him. On Aug. 30, Ms. Reed went to the hotel where Mr. Hyatt was staying and reclaimed the Highlander that she had purchased for him.
Ms. Reed also hired a private investigator to look into the man she thought she was building a life with. Two weeks later, a bench warrant for Mr. Hyatt’s arrest was issued for the alleged misuse of welfare funds, as reported by Ms. Cummins.
‘I’m Going to Be OK’
Mr. Hyatt soon surfaced in Guam, drawn by a job offer from the country’s table tennis federation.
“I now have a Guam driver’s license,” he told The Guam Post on Oct. 19, 2018, in an article headlined “Guam Table Tennis Gets an Olympian.” He said he had arrived to coach and “I am here to stay.”
Within a few hours of the article being published online, the email inbox of the reporter who wrote it, Matt Weiss, filled with messages from Ms. Reed and others who told of their experiences with Mr. Hyatt. Mr. Weiss wrote another article, this one with the headline “Former Olympian on Guam Wanted in California.” The table tennis federation pulled Mr. Hyatt’s job offer.
He left Guam for Southeast Asia.
He turned up in the Philippines, and assumed a new identity as Anthony Bennett, according to interviews with people there and a copy of the identification he used, which was seen by The New York Times.
Mr. Hyatt continued to meet with women. Several who interacted with him during this time remember him constantly being on his laptop or his phone, moving from one hotel to another, and asking for money. He spoke less of his table tennis past. On a LinkedIn profile, Mr. Hyatt claimed he worked as a vice president of sales and marketing for the food company ADM from February 2018 to May 2021. A company spokeswoman said they did not find “anyone of that name in our records.”
Back in Sacramento, Ms. Reed is continuing to improve her credit. She is also in counseling.
“I was so humiliated after this,” she said.
She communicates with others like Ms. Cummins who say they were also duped by Mr. Hyatt and occasionally grabs a glass of wine with them. They’ve compared their timelines, and credit card statements.
All told, Mr. Hyatt now stands accused of defrauding at least 10 people out of a total of several hundred thousand dollars.
“This guy is so good at what he does,” Ms. Cummins said. “It makes you feel like you’re kind of crazy but then you meet these women and you think, ‘I’m going to be OK.’”
Ms. Reed has refrained from dating since her time with Mr. Hyatt. She teaches second grade during the day and teaches Pilates in her spare time. And she continues to share her story about her Tinder date with an Olympian that ran amok.
On a recent spring afternoon, she clicked through files on her laptop, her dog, Stella, looking on as the sun set against the shining tiles of the mosaics that adorn the walls of her dining room.
“I have ZERO regrets,” one of the last text messages she received from Mr. Hyatt said. “When my time comes to move on from this world to the next I will be proud that I took the road less travelled.”
The post The Broken Promises of a Table Tennis Olympian appeared first on New York Times.
