FBI filing backs off UM coaches

Newest indictment removes references

CORAL GABLES – When Hurricanes men’s basketball coach Jim Larrañaga said last October he believed he was the unnamed “Coach-3” in a September indictment tied to an FBI probe into corruption in college basketball, he vehemently denied that either he or his coaches had committed any wrongdoing.

A new, superseding indictment handed down in the case late Tuesday included additional charges against former Adidas executive Jim Gatto, but softened the language involving Miami’s coaches. That may be as close as federal prosecutors get to clearing the school or its coaches.

“We have always professed [Larrañaga’s] innocence, and with this latest superseding indictment, it appears the government has done everything but kiss and make up,” Stuart Z. Grossman, one of Larrañaga’s attorneys, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday.

“But they still mention the university. I’m told that the government never says they’re sorry. It’s just the way they are.

“They water it down, they omit … and they don’t indict. It’s just the way it goes. We think it’s

so unfair to our program to even be named casually in this new indictment that has totally watered down any alleged scheme involving the program.”

In Tuesday’s superseding indictment, which now replaces the earlier indictment, Kansas and North Carolina State are formally mentioned for the first time in the FBI probe and additional charges are announced against Gatto.

Miami remains one of the schools named in the indictment, along with Louisville, but the some of the original allegations mentioning the school’s coaches no longer appear in the indictment.

In September, Miami’s potential involvement was linked to the efforts of Gatto, another former Adidas official Merl Code, agent Christian Dawkins and travel basketball coach Brad Augustine to funnel $150,000 to a 2018 basketball prospect in order to get him to sign with “University-7,” a school later revealed to be Miami.

Those original court documents included language saying that on wiretapped phone calls intercepted by authorities, Dawkins and Code discussed “paying ‘Player-12” and/or his family at the request of at least one coach at “University-7 (Coach-3)” and that the two defendants “discussed the involvement of ‘Coach-3’ in ensuring that ‘Company-1’ would funnel payments to ‘Player-12.’”

In Tuesday’s indictment, there was no mention of Augustine — who, according to the Washington Post had charges against him dropped in February, nor was there any mention of Coach-3’s request to pay a prospect or his alleged involvement in funneling money to the prospect.

Also removed from the new indictment was language saying “‘Coach-3’ knows everything” about the scheme.

All of that, Grossman believes, should be enough to clear Larrañaga and Miami.

‘I’d like the government to end this, to say they’re going on to other universities,” Grossman said.