Floyd Mayweather Sued By Toll Booth Tycoons Over $330,000 In Alleged Unpaid Rent On Luxury Manhattan Apartment

Back in 2016, a pair of Miami-based married entrepreneurs named David and Leila Centner paid $15.3 million for two luxury apartments inside one of Manhattan's most exclusive residential towers. The units sat on the 18th and 19th floors of the Baccarat Hotel and Residences at 20 West 53rd Street.

After the purchase, the Centners knocked down walls and combined the two apartments into one extraordinary residence: an eight-bedroom, seven-bathroom duplex spanning roughly 4,200 square feet of interior space. And that's just the inside. The apartment also features a 3,100-square-foot private, marble-capped outdoor terrace, so large that one wing is big enough to function as a private pickleball court.

You can see the apartment in all its glory in the video tour below. Do not miss the scene at the 1:30 mark when the suit-clad realtor decides to run from one wing to the other and jump over the pickleball net while gazing up at the skyline in amazement.

In July 2023, David and Leila decided they no longer wanted to live in the unit and listed it for $28 million. When no buyer emerged at that price, they pivoted. In August 2024, the duplex was made available as a rental for $100,000 per month.

Enter Floyd Mayweather.

As 2024 was coming to a close, Mayweather signed a lease to rent the Centners' Baccarat duplex at the full asking price of $100,000 a month, making it one of the most expensive residential rentals in Midtown Manhattan.

Unfortunately, as later alleged in a lawsuit filed by David and Leila, Mayweather did not turn out to be the best tenant.

According to a lawsuit that was filed in New York state court, David and Leila allege that Floyd made his rent payments on time for the first few months of 2025, but by July 2025, he allegedly stopped paying. He allegedly did not pay rent in July, August, September, October, or November.

While this was all going on, Floyd continued making social media posts flexing this wealth.  For example, on November 4, 2025, Floyd published the following photo of himself on a private jet with stacks of cash in front of him, under the caption "I just be minding my business!"

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Floyd Mayweather (@floydmayweather)

FYI: Each of those cash bundles is $10,000. I count 30 cash bundles. So you're looking at around $300,000.

According to reporting by The Real Deal, that social media post was somewhat of a tipping point for David and Leila, who by that point were owed $500,000 in rent. More than that, if you include late fees and other charges. According to David and Leila's realtor, who spoke to The Real Deal:

"He had this post he put up on Instagram with stacks of money in front of him, and they sent it to me and said, 'Well, how about using some of that money to pay us?'"

The Centners applied Floyd's security deposit to the back rent and started a conversation with the boxer about repaying the debt. He agreed, but apparently made one payment and then stopped again. In their lawsuit, the Centners are seeking damages in the amount of $337,763.13, which represents the $500,000 in alleged missed rent, plus late fees, minus the $100,000 later payment and the security deposit.

Neither Mayweather nor his representatives responded to requests from The Real Deal or separate reporting from People.com. And taken alongside other recent reporting, something genuinely unusual appears to be unfolding around Floyd Mayweather's finances.

About a month ago, Business Insider published a lengthy investigation that raised serious questions about Mayweather's post-boxing finances. That report cited public records and court filings showing that Mayweather had taken out tens of millions of dollars in high-interest loans secured against his real estate, faced foreclosures on commercial properties, and been hit with a growing list of lawsuits and liens over allegedly unpaid bills. Mayweather's attorney strongly denied the report's allegations, and the boxer is actually suing both Business Insider and one of its reporters for defamation over its coverage.

Then, just last week, Mayweather dramatically escalated the situation by filing a $340 million lawsuit against Showtime Networks and former Showtime Sports president Stephen Espinoza. In that complaint, Mayweather alleged that a significant portion of his fight earnings was never properly paid to him and was instead diverted into accounts he did not control. The lawsuit claims that funds from some of the most lucrative bouts in boxing history were routed through third-party accounts, controlled by his former manager, Al Haymon, and that tens of millions of dollars were deducted under vague labels like "expenses" or "reimbursements," and that at least $340 million of his career earnings is now "missing and unaccounted for." Crucially, the lawsuit argues that the real damage goes far beyond the missing cash, alleging that the lost opportunity to invest those funds over the past decade could mean billions of dollars in foregone wealth.

Mayweather's lawsuit also claims:

"The revelation that he was defrauded out of hundreds of millions… has fueled false rumors that he was 'broke,' causing reputational harm and mental anguish."

Whether these events are connected or merely coincidental will ultimately be decided in court, but for the moment, they combine to form one of the most unusual and closely watched financial sagas in modern sports history.

But before you go, who are David and Leila Centner? And how did they earn enough money to pay $15 million in 2016 for two condos in The Baccarat? I'm glad you asked! Because it's an interesting story!

If you're younger than 40, the following historical anecdote may be somewhat shocking:

There was a time, not that long ago, when, in order to pay a toll on a road or a bridge, you literally had to drive your car up to a little glass booth and hand over cash to a human being.

It was a huge pain in the butt. Not only would this naturally cause a huge bottleneck of traffic around all tolls, but you also could not pay with a credit card. You had to pay in cash. Sometimes exact change! Either way, most of the time, you would not remember that you needed cash until about 30 seconds before you saw the toll booths in the distance. You would scramble searching for $1.75 in your cushions, then you'd hand the money to a grumpy toll collector who, understandably, didn't love their job and didn't appreciate that you just caused the line to back up even more with a dozen angry commuters honking and screaming in the rearview mirror.

But that was life. And if you're thinking that's how life was until the 1970s or 1980s, when someone finally solved this problem with a better system, you are wrong. I grew up in the San Francisco area, and FasTrak (aka E-ZPass on the East Coast) was first introduced on the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000. And the actual human toll collectors remained operating for another 13 YEARS.

Even after the invention of FasTrak and E-ZPass, tolls presented another interesting quagmire when you traveled and rented a car. You could glide through the "Express Lane" in your own car, but the second you sat in a rental, you were back in 1985. If you didn't have your own transponder to stick on the windshield, you were forced back into the cash lane, or worse, you'd accidentally drive through an electronic toll and trigger a $50 administrative "violation" for a $1.50 bridge crossing.

This brings us to David and Leila Centner.

While the rest of us were digging through glove boxes for nickels, David Centner saw a massive, untapped gold mine in the friction between rental cars and toll booths. In 2002, he founded Highway Toll Administration (HTA).

HTA's "revolution" was simple but incredibly lucrative: they became the bridge between the government toll collectors and the rental agencies. David developed PlatePass, a system that allowed rental companies to register their entire fleet's license plates so they could use electronic lanes without a physical transponder.

It was a win-win-win. The Toll Authorities got paid automatically without mailing paper fines.

The Rental Agencies (Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty) turned a "fine processing" headache into a profit center by charging customers a daily "convenience fee."

The Centners took a slice of every single toll and fee processed for millions of cars.

In 2018, two years after they paid $15 million for their NYC apartments, David sold HTA to a private equity firm, walking away with a fortune in the hundreds of millions. In the last decade, David and Leila began a second act as "wellness educators" and philanthropists.