Kansas, NC State newly mentioned in NCAA hoops case

NEW YORK — Kansas and North Carolina State are the latest schools to be swept up in a bribery scandal involving college basketball.

A rewritten indictment released Tuesday in New York alleges that an Adidas representative, who no longer works for the company, arranged for payments to parents of athletes willing to commit to the schools.

The refreshed indictment came several months after 10 men were charged in an alleged scheme to bribe assistant coaches in exchange for steering topflight NBA prospects to a particular agent or financial adviser. Four assistant coaches have been prosecuted and the scandal has led to the end of coach Rick Pitino’s career at the University of Louisville. The new indictment expands the scope of the charges, alleging a wire-fraud conspiracy that included alleged payments to families of six studentathletes being recruited by four schools, prosecutors said.

The court papers portrayed the shoe executive and some coaches as bad actors, saying the conspiracy included hiding payments and signing forms falsely asserting that no payments had been made. The indictment paints a picture of transactions that were concealed to allow athletes to make it through eligibility reviews.

Prosecutors said the Adidas representative, James Gatto, and others agreed to pay $90,000 to the mother of a Kansas recruit and to funnel $40,000 to the father of a recruit at North Carolina State who was widely regarded as the top high school recruit in the state of North Carolina and who had played for an Adidas-sponsored Amateur Athletic Union team. No players are directly named, but specific details make clear the indictment is describing former North Carolina State star Dennis Smith Jr. and Kansas player Silvio De Sousa.

Prosecutors say money helped secure the players’ commitments to play college basketball at the schools and encouraged them to sign an Adidas sponsorship deal when they entered the NBA.

Smith, a point guard, was drafted by the Mavericks and declined comment to The Associated Press on Tuesday night as Dallas played the Phoenix Suns.

A date listed in court papers for the announcement — Aug. 30 — is when De Sousa made a surprise announcement he would play for Kansas. He became a crucial player off the bench this season as the Jayhawks reached the Final Four before losing to eventual champion Villanova.