His ties to the apartheid-era South African government drew attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Michigan State University community, but his 1986 charges were dropped due to a five-year statute of limitation.
[1] He spent his early years with his family, including six siblings, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,[1] where his father was a steel worker.
He subsequently founded the Panax Corporation and Global Communications, and became the owner of "over seventy newspapers across the United States.
"[7] By December 1986, the charges were dropped by Federal District Judge Charles Robert Richey due to a "five-year time limit" as McGoff had cut his ties with the South African government in 1979.
[8] McGoff "filed for personal bankruptcy" in 1995 after the buyer of one of his newspapers, The Macomb Daily, failed to pay him and left him with a 40 million dollar debt.