Pac-12 at heart of bribery arrests

A wide-ranging, two-year FBI investigation of men’s college basketball has resulted in multiple arrests, including a shoe-company top executive, power-wielding agents and assistant coaches at major programs, who stand charged with a wide variety of financial corruption, including bribery and wire fraud.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars allegedly exchanged hands in a conspiracy aimed at influencing players to commit to certain universities, shoe sponsors, representatives and financial advisers, according to federal prosecutors.

James Gatto, the director of global sports marketing for basketball at Adidas, Auburn assistant coach Chuck Person, Arizona assistant coach Eman-

uel Richardson, Oklahoma State assistant coach Lamont Evans and USC assistant coach Tony Bland were among 10 men arrested in the nationwide sting.

The FBI has been investigating the exploitation of “the hoop dreams of student-athletes around the country, allegedly treating them as little more than opportunities to enrich themselves through bribery and fraud schemes,” since 2015, according to federal prosecutors.

One of the sport’s broadest crackdowns has a wide scope that includes a couple of Pac-12 schools.

“I am deeply troubled by the charges filed in federal court today against a number of individuals involved in college basketball, including two assistant coaches employed by member institutions of our conference,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said in a statement after the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York announced the charges. “Protection of our student-athletes, and of the integrity of competition, is the conference’s top priority. I have been in contact with the leadership of both universities and it is clear they also take this matter very seriously.

“We are still learning the facts of this matter, but these allegations, if true, are profoundly upsetting to me. They strike at the heart of the integrity of our programs, and of the game that so many people love and play the right way.”

Richardson, a longtime assistant at Arizona known by the nickname “Book,” was suspended by the school after appearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Tucson on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, solicitation of bribes by an agent of a federally funded organization, conspiracy to commit honest-services fraud, wire-fraud conspiracy and travel-act conspiracy.

Richardson allegedly took $20,000 in bribes last summer and paid a recruit to commit to Arizona. In exchange for the money, Richardson agreed “to use his influence over the student-athletes he coached to pressure them,” according to the complaint.

USC said it placed Bland on immediate administrative leave, and the university said it hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh to conduct an internal investigation.

Bland, considered one of the conference’s top recruiters, was charged for allegedly accepting $13,000 during a July meeting in Las Vegas with a former agent who was working as an undercover FBI agent and a cooperating witness. The money was apparently a payment for directing a player to the agent and a financial adviser.

“It’s jaw dropping. Without knowing all the details, certainly it’s a black eye on the sport right now,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said. “… There’s so much money at stake, so many different people involved with the high school players, that people are going to try to be creative and come up with ideas and ways to gain advantages. …

“It’s really concerning because the integrity of the sport, and the idea of keeping an even playing field, is kind of at the core of what we do.”

Administrators from USC and Arizona expressed surprise at the charges, but there is a stigma among major-revenue sports that everybody is skirting the rules in some fashion when it comes to recruiting.

“I can only speak for myself and the program. We do everything we can to make sure we do all the little things properly, and certainly the big things as well,” Haase said. “I’m not claiming to be perfect and the program to be perfect, but we try darn hard to make sure we do things, from a compliance standpoint, properly.

“To say that ‘everybody does it’ — obviously when you make general statements, they tend to be inaccurate.”