Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is denying a 2011 sexual assault allegation detailed this week in an Oregon newspaper. “It didn’t happen,” Cuban said in a terse email to the Associated Press.
The allegation, detailed in police reports quoted Tuesday in Oregon’s Willamette Week newspaper, involved Cuban reaching down the backside of a woman’s pants and penetrating her vagina during a photo snapshot at a crowded Portland nightclub.
The Washinton Post reported tonight that the NBA said is reviewing the allegation and why prosecutors declined to pursue it at the time.
The woman, who was not identified in the article, told Willamette Week, “I really left it in the past. I haven’t thought about it for seven years,” but adds, “I filed the report because what he did was wrong. I stand behind that report 1,000 percent.”
Cuban’s attorney, Stephen Houze, provided the newspaper with the following statement: “These allegations are thoroughly investigated by the Multnomah County District’s Attorney’s Office and the Portland Police Bureau. According to the detailed prosecution decline memo, investigators interviewed the complainant’s boyfriend and female friend, as well as employees and patrons of the bar, and other persons with Mr. Cuban and no one observed any inappropriate behavior by Mr. Cuban. This incident never happened and her accusations are false.”
While the incident apparently was not observed by others, the police report, according to the newspaper, included the snapshots of Cuban and the woman that were taken at the time of the alleged molestation, including two photos described by a detective as showing what appears to be Cuban “reaching down toward her buttocks.”
ABC and Sony TV, which produces Shark Tank, both declined Deadline’s request for comment.
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