A judge in Los Angeles has frozen the assets of O.J. Simpson in a bid by the Goldman family to recover the money from the If I Did It book deal.
U.S. District Judge Manual Real barred Simpson from spending his advance at least until a January 24 hearing on the lawsuit, said David Cook, Fred Goldman's attorney.
Cook said that at the hearing the judge could order Simpson to pay the advance money to the Goldmans or keep it frozen until a trial on the matter.
Simpson's attorney, Yale Galanter, could not be reached for comment.
The amount of the advance was never disclosed, but some reports have put it at around $1 million (515,000 pounds). Simpson has said he was paid less than that, and that he already spent the money.
A public furore over the book If I Did It, in which Simpson muses over how he could have killed his ex-wife and Goldman, prompted News Corp. media tycoon Rupert Murdoch to scrap it and an accompanying television special in November.
Simpson was acquitted of the murders in 1995 after the so-called "Trial of the Century" but found liable for the deaths by a civil jury in 1997 and ordered to pay a $33.5 million judgement to the victims' families.
The Simpson book deal and television interview were brokered for News Corp.-owned publishing house HarperCollins by Judith Regan, who was fired about a month later amid accusations of anti-semitism.
Goldman's lawsuit claims that Simpson set up a straw corporation called Lorraine Brooke Associates to collect the book advance from HarperCollins so that he could avoid paying the $33.5 million judgement
Publisher Judith Regan has said that the money was paid into a corporation so that it would go to O.J.'s children. It looks like the O.J. Simpson mess isn't going away anytime soon.
