In February 1998 he was charged with one count of racketeering and two counts of grand theft, and in summer 1998 he was indicted by federal prosecutors for fraud, extortion, money laundering, conspiracy and tax evasion. He initially protested his innocence and claimed there was a racial motivation for the charges, but the proceedings of his trial and his eventual plea bargaining agreement dampened the enthusiasm of those who maintained his innocence. In 1999 Lyons was sentenced to a total of five and a half years in jail for misappropriating more than $4 million from the NBC while he was its President, a post from which he had already resigned.