Talk about caught with your pants around your ankles!
Tuesday the Department of Justice announced federal charges against 10 NCAA coaches and employees.
Jim Gatto Director of Global Marketing for Adidas Basketball is said to have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to funnel in top prospects to Adidas sponsored colleges.
The FBI arrested 10 people, including NCAA coaches, financial advisors and others on fraud and corruption charges.
Gatto was named in the complaint, alleging that he set to conspirie with high school coaches to pay athletes to play at universities sponsored by the company. According to the complaint several college coaches were named Oklahoma State’s Lamont Evans, Albun’s Chuck Person, USC’s Tony Bland and Arizona’s Emmanuel Richardson. As well as mention of Louisville, all part of a massive corruption sting into NCAA basketball, the intel lead investigators to countless guilty parties.
53-year-old Person a 14-year NBA veteran and has been an assistant at Auburn under head coach Bruce Pearl since 2014. Career long assistant coach Emmaunal Richardson served under Sean Miller at Xavier from 2007 through 2009 before following him Arizona.
Although Kenny Klein a spokesman for Louisville says “We have no idea about any of this stuff, This is the first I’ve heard of it. Nobody in basketball is aware of any of this.”
Gatto is said to be the lynchpin in this entire scandal. Nothing has been released as of yet from universities or any of the people accused.