BleedGopher
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per Yahoo:
The most powerful man in college basketball this winter is not a Hall of Fame coach, future lottery pick or even whatever administrator seeds the NCAA tournament field.
He’s an impeccably dressed, Yale-educated, 38-year-old assistant U.S. attorney from Manhattan, where he’s shaken up the sport by leading the federal prosecuting team that delivered convictions to three men in the college basketball fraud trial.
Now, Edward “Ted” Diskant can decide just how far he wants to try to take this case. And college basketball can wonder what comes next if he does.
A jury Wednesday found Adidas executives Jim Gatto and Merl Code and basketball middleman Christian Dawkins guilty on all counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for paying the families of top high school recruits and steering them to preferred, Adidas-sponsored colleges.
That required Diskant’s team, which included Noah Solowiejczyk, Eli Mark and Aline Flodr, to successfully argue the colleges being sent five-star recruits to help win them games and make them money were actually somehow victims, not benefactors.
Most who know the wink-and-nod nature of the sport found the theory dubious, but the government made it work. Now everyone in basketball is wondering if it means anyone who has done anything that theoretically rendered a player ineligible hasn’t likewise broken federal fraud statutes.
A February trial is already scheduled for former NBA star and Auburn assistant Chuck Person and co-defendant Rashan Michel, an Atlanta clothier. An additional trial featuring Code, Dawkins and three former college assistants – Tony Bland (USC), Lamont Evans (Oklahoma State) and Emanuel “Book” Richardson (Arizona) – is set to begin in April.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office can choose to try those cases, which would bring additional waves of potential NCAA violations involving an untold number of schools and coaches to become public. Or it could offer, especially considering the position of strength Wednesday’s convictions provide, plea deals and possibly conclude this without further effort, sparing plenty of secrets.
At any point, it can permit the NCAA to start investigating and use the mountains of evidence collected in the case. While much was heard in court over the past month, there was even more – wiretaps, under-oath allegations, documents – that wasn’t included because it didn’t fit the prosecution or was denied admission by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office could also attempt to flip any or all of the people still involved and go after even more prominent names – potentially including the prominent head coaches who have thus far escaped prosecution.
At this point, there is no one in basketball that doesn’t respect, if not outright fear, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
“Ted is in the driver’s seat right now, there is no question,” said one attorney involved in the case. “This could be the end, or this could be the beginning.”
https://sports.yahoo.com/hoops-corr...balls-powerful-man-shake-sport-033237260.html
Go Gophers!!
The most powerful man in college basketball this winter is not a Hall of Fame coach, future lottery pick or even whatever administrator seeds the NCAA tournament field.
He’s an impeccably dressed, Yale-educated, 38-year-old assistant U.S. attorney from Manhattan, where he’s shaken up the sport by leading the federal prosecuting team that delivered convictions to three men in the college basketball fraud trial.
Now, Edward “Ted” Diskant can decide just how far he wants to try to take this case. And college basketball can wonder what comes next if he does.
A jury Wednesday found Adidas executives Jim Gatto and Merl Code and basketball middleman Christian Dawkins guilty on all counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for paying the families of top high school recruits and steering them to preferred, Adidas-sponsored colleges.
That required Diskant’s team, which included Noah Solowiejczyk, Eli Mark and Aline Flodr, to successfully argue the colleges being sent five-star recruits to help win them games and make them money were actually somehow victims, not benefactors.
Most who know the wink-and-nod nature of the sport found the theory dubious, but the government made it work. Now everyone in basketball is wondering if it means anyone who has done anything that theoretically rendered a player ineligible hasn’t likewise broken federal fraud statutes.
A February trial is already scheduled for former NBA star and Auburn assistant Chuck Person and co-defendant Rashan Michel, an Atlanta clothier. An additional trial featuring Code, Dawkins and three former college assistants – Tony Bland (USC), Lamont Evans (Oklahoma State) and Emanuel “Book” Richardson (Arizona) – is set to begin in April.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office can choose to try those cases, which would bring additional waves of potential NCAA violations involving an untold number of schools and coaches to become public. Or it could offer, especially considering the position of strength Wednesday’s convictions provide, plea deals and possibly conclude this without further effort, sparing plenty of secrets.
At any point, it can permit the NCAA to start investigating and use the mountains of evidence collected in the case. While much was heard in court over the past month, there was even more – wiretaps, under-oath allegations, documents – that wasn’t included because it didn’t fit the prosecution or was denied admission by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office could also attempt to flip any or all of the people still involved and go after even more prominent names – potentially including the prominent head coaches who have thus far escaped prosecution.
At this point, there is no one in basketball that doesn’t respect, if not outright fear, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
“Ted is in the driver’s seat right now, there is no question,” said one attorney involved in the case. “This could be the end, or this could be the beginning.”
https://sports.yahoo.com/hoops-corr...balls-powerful-man-shake-sport-033237260.html
Go Gophers!!
