Thousands of pages of records reviewed by nathanfenno provide a detailed look inside a high-profile investigation into NCAA basketball, led by a veteran FBI agent whose conduct on a vodka-soaked day in Las Vegas landed him on the wrong side of the law.
They took over a sprawling penthouse at the Cosmopolitan, filled the in-room safe with government cash and stocked the wet bar with alcohol. Hidden cameras — including one installed near a crystal-encrusted wall in the living room — recorded visitors.
Carpenter had consumed nearly a fifth of vodka and at least six beers by the time he returned to the penthouse to shower and change clothes before a night out. The weight of the federal government crashed down on college basketball at a livestreamed news conference in Manhattan when authorities unveiled the investigation in September 2017. The assistant director in charge of the New York FBI office warned potential cheaters that “we have your playbook.”, including assistant coaches from USC, Arizona, Auburn and Oklahoma State.
Instead, the meandering government effort seemed at times like an investigation searching for a crime, marshaling vast resources to ultimately round up an assortment of low-level figures for alleged wrongdoing — particularly the coach bribery scheme — that people involved in the sport said wasn’t a common practice until the FBI started handing out envelopes of cash.We’re offering L.A. Times subscribers special access to our best journalism. Thank you for your support.
To bankroll the investments along with funding a music management company, the Securities and Exchange Commission later alleged, Blazer misappropriated $2.3 million from five clients between 2010 and 2012, forging documents, making “Ponzi-like payments” to hide the theft, faking a client’s signature and lying to investigators.Seeking leniency, Blazer met with federal prosecutors and the SEC in New York in June 2014.
A court filing blamed his heavy drinking on the emotional toll from the lengthy deployment in Iraq and an improvised explosive device destroying the Humvee behind his vehicle. One person who met D’Angelo described him as a “mix between a hedge fund baby and Jersey Shore Italian.” After the 2009 death of his younger brother Dorian from a heart ailment while playing basketball, Dawkins helped start a youth travel team named Dorian’s Pride. He created an event company called Living Out Your Dreams — LOYD for short — named himself chief executive and organized basketball camps.
On a windy afternoon in June 2017, Dawkins boarded a large yacht moored at the North Cove Marina in Manhattan’s Battery Park. A system built around the NCAA’s ban on paying players and their families was lucrative for everyone but the people on the court. The NCAA brought in $761 million from the March Madness tournament in 2017. Multinational shoe companies paid universities to wear their gear. Top head coaches earned $4 million or more a year. It all helped to nurture a thriving underground economy with bidding wars for top players to attend universities, retain agents, sign with financial advisors.
“If you just want to be Santa Claus and just give people money, well f—, let’s just take that money and just go to the strip club and just buy hookers,” Dawkins told D’Angelo. “But just to pay guys just for the sake of paying a guy just because he’s at a school, that doesn’t make common sense to me.”“Here, here, here, here’s the model,” D’Angelo stammered.“I respect that ... you don’t think that’s the best approach, but that’s what I’m doing,” D’Angelo said in the call.
As the Las Vegas trip approached, Code and Dawkins brainstormed which coaches could meet D’Angelo, but Code’s unease about the investor was growing. Tony Bland, in a white shirt, was among the college coaches who met with Jeff D’Angelo and Christian Dawkins in the penthouse suite at the Cosmopolitan.
NCAA investigators said in reports that Murphy and TCU assistant coach Corey Barker knew before their meetings in the penthouse on July 28 that they would be paid and had agreed to give all of the money to Dawkins. Prosecutors alleged Murphy and Barker each received $6,000 from D’Angelo. Murphy handed the cash over to Dawkins in a bathroom off the main casino floor, while Barker did the same near the hotel’s valet parking stand, according to accounts they gave to the NCAA.
when they learned the $1,500 they paid for the space was actually a food and beverage minimum, according to a“Despite the obstacles, all of the undercover meetings were very successful,” Carpenter’s attorney wrote in a court filing. “At the same time, there is no doubt that the intensity, anxiety, elation and exhaustion of the weekend’s activities left Mr. Carpenter in an even more precarious position.
The undercover agent alleged that the four agents met early that morning and “there was a discussion ... to just take care of it,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Schiess said in court. The supervisor and junior agent, Schiess said, “hotly contest” that such a meeting occurred. Around the same time, Code answered the door at his home in Greer, S.C., in his underwear. He counted at least 20 FBI agents, some brandishing pistols and assault-style rifles, and 15 vehicles lined up on his block.Augustine, the Florida youth coach, had planned to meet Dawkins that morning at a New York hotel. He checked his phone on the walk over and found scores of tweets mentioning him, then scrolled through the criminal complaint against him while standing in Times Square.
The investigation led to 10 men being convicted of felonies at trial or by taking plea deals. Five were sentenced to prison. Dawkins got the longest combined term — 18 months and a day. The cases were built around the theory that universities were the victims. Prosecutors argued the schools had been deceived into issuing scholarships to athletes who would be ineligible under NCAA rules barring payments to players or their families.
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