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College basketball coaches charged with accepting bribes in federal corruption case

These file photos show assistant basketball coaches Tony Bland, left, Chuck Person, center, and Lamont Richardson. The three, along with assistant coach Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, were identified in court papers and are among 10 people facing federal charges in Manhattan federal court in a wide probe of fraud and corruption in the NCAA, authorities said. (Ben Liebenberg / AP)
By Will Hobson and Matt Bonesteel Washington Post

The Justice Department unsealed indictments Tuesday morning charging basketball coaches at four Division I schools with accepting bribes to steer athletes toward the professional services of several business managers, financial advisers, and representatives of a major international sportswear company.

The assistant coaches named in the indictments are Lamont Evans of Oklahoma State, Chuck Person of Auburn, Emanuel Richardson of Arizona and Tony Bland of Southern California. The coaches are charged with accepting bribes in exchange for steering athletes toward using the services of business executives including Jim Gatto, a marketing director at Adidas and Munish Sood, chief executive of financial advisory company Princeton Capital.

A news conference is scheduled this morning in New York City.

The complaint alleges that Jim Gatto, the head of sports marketing at Adidas, paid recruits to sign with Adidas-sponsored schools and then sign with Adidas once they turned professional. He was assisted in this scheme by Merl Code, another Adidas employee, according to the complaint. The payments were brokered by three men: Christian Dawkins, a business manager; Munish Sood, a financial adviser; and Jonathan Brand Augustine, who runs an Adidas-sponsored AAU basketball team. The payments were made with the promise that the players sign agreements with Dawkins and Sood once they turned professional.

The men agreed to pay $100,000 to the family of one recruit and $150,000 to the family of another recruit, the complaint alleges. The schools were not named, though one was described as “a public research university located in Kentucky” with approximately 22,640 students. The other school was described as “a private research university located in Florida” with approximately 16,000 students.

The alleged conspirators are accused in the indictment of paying one recruit, described as an all-American, $100,000 to attend the university in Kentucky, with the payments designed to be concealed from both the school and the NCAA. The scheme was set in motion in May, after the player announced that he was looking at other schools. In June, after the alleged bribery scheme kicked in, the player announced his attention to attend the school in Kentucky, a decision that was regarded as a surprise. The payments were made at the request of “at least one coach” on that school’s staff, according to the charging documents. Via tapped cellphone conversations heard by the FBI, the defendants also are accused of money laundering in an attempt to cover up the source of the payments.

The charging documents also allege that the defendants and an unnamed assistant coach from the Kentucky school devised a plan to pay another recruit, this one from the high school class of 2019, at a meeting in a Las Vegas hotel room that was surreptitiously videotaped by the FBI. The assistant coach from the Kentucky school was recorded as saying the scheme would have to be “low key” because the program already was on NCAA probation. The coach also was recorded giving Augustine, the AAU official, an envelope containing $12,700 in cash, which Dawkins said “will take care of July, of August.” The scheme was patterned after the one used for the other recruit, according to the charging document.

In July, the alleged conspirators set forth a plan to pay $150,000 to a recruit from the class of 2018 to attend the Florida school, according to phone conversations overheard on further FBI wiretaps.