Former New Mexico State basketball player Daniel Hicks created a real life South Harmon Institute of Technology from the movie \”Accepted\” after he scammed seven hopeful ballers out of $500 each with a fake basketball academy he promoted.
Hicks, who according to his Facebook page graduated from South Charleston High School in 1991, drew teenagers from the US as well as abroad to come to the South Charleston, West Virginia Prep Academy. Teenagers traveled from as far as France and Africa for a basketball academy that was advertised as a place where they would be put on a fast track to the NBA. Unfortunately after traveling to West Virginia and staying in a cramped 3-bedroom apartment, they realized the camp was nothing more than a scam meant to generate quick revenue for Hicks.
According to Yahoo! Sports, the fake camp drew 20 teenagers, only seven paying the $500 needed to be a part of the academy. When they were discovered in the apartment, some weren’t sleeping on mattresses and hadn’t been fed in two days, according to South Charleston mayor Frank Mullens. After they were discovered in the apartment, they were sent to a nearby Ramada hotel after officials called and informed the hotel of the teenager’s situations.
“When I got there we had to stay in a three-room apartment, but we were promised to get beds, get fed three times a day, have our clothes washed,” Baltimore teenager Corey Saunders, the first player at the school to speak publicly to Yahoo! Sports. “None of that happened. We were left at the gym three hours a day, had to get food for ourselves.
“A lot of players there didn’t have a lot of money. We had to spend our own money for food. It was just bad. Once we got there we were finding out more things about his background. He had gone to jail for fraud, drugs. He had brought in coaches that he thought could land big players, but was telling them things on fraud.”
The Charleston Gazette and Associated Press reported that the local police forces and FBI had opened up and investigation into Hicks.
“This is very complex and we’re just breaking the iceberg on a lot of it,” South Charleston Police Chief Brad Rinehart told the Gazette. “We’ve spoken with the on-duty prosecutor. This could be a federal issue, or a state issue, and that’s something we’re trying to determine.
“They’re good kids. I put about seven of them on the bus last night and a couple of them hugged me goodbye. They felt cheated, like they got scammed and let down — they put their trust in [Hicks].”
Now being questioned by authorities, Hicks claims that his goal was always to bring a positive academic and basketball setting to South Charleston. He insists that some of the students were not a part of his academy and were brought unexpectedly by a Oklahoma coach who planned to coach one of the fake academy’s forthcoming basketball teams.
“Some of those kids are 20 years old, with no birth certificates,” said Hicks, who also played basketball at Concord. “How could I put them in my school?”
Matthew Moyer, coordinator for Lexington, KY-based Bleid Sports, said Hicks contacted him about putting his teams in as many games as possible for tournaments in the 2010-2011 school year.
“He called me and asked me to put his four teams [three mens, one womens] in as many games as possible,” Moyer said. “We worked out a deal for 20 games in our showcases. He told me he had a church that supported his team and he would have a cashiers check sent to me. Never heard from him again. I imagine he used our schedule to promote false games for recruiting.
”He called me through our website and dropped a few former U.K. players’ names to me. He asked me to stop through a team practice on my way back from Durham, N.C. I stopped into the gym at the time he requested and there was Zumba going on. The gym administrator laughed when I asked where the practice was going on. That was the last time I even tried to touch base with him.”
South Charleston City Manager Carleton Lee told The Gazette that he watched the kids play and they were NBA material.
“[The mother of the player from France is] torn up, because she had to make a decision whether to send her son on with the coach from Oklahoma or fly them back to France.”
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to these students, but even more interesting to see what the courts decide to do with Daniel Hicks for scamming these kids and giving them a false sense of hope.