The FBI claims the Director of Global Marketing for Adidas Basketball, Jim Gatto paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to lore top prospects to Adidas sponsored colleges.
There are 10 people facing charges and 8 of them have been arrested. In the court docs filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of NY, the FBI says Gatto tried to pay one player and his family $100,000 to get him to a school of his choice. Another player got $150,000, but he had to sign with Adidas when he got to the NBA.
The FBI also says that a coach at a major college in Florida told Gatto that he needed to pay a player $150,000 so the player wouldn't attend another school sponsored by a rival company. The coach allegedly said that the rival company offered the player a "substantial sum of money."
The FBI says it has wiretapped phone calls catching Gatto and his accomplices in the act.
This was all apart of a huge probe into the corruption of the NCAA in the form of 3 separate criminal complaints. One of the probes centered around Auburn assistant coach Chuck Person and another included USC assistant coach Tony Bland, Oklahoma State coach Lamont Evans and Book Richardson from the University of Arizona.
Source: tmz.com
