The former director of an Adidas-sponsored travel basketball team, Thomas “T.J.” Gassnola, pictured third from left above, pled guilty to federal wire fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the government’s NCAA basketball bribery case, according to court documents made public Friday.
Gassnola entered the plea on March 30 to charges that he made payments to families of high school student-athletes in exchange for commitment to play for certain universities, according to court documents. The plea and cooperation agreements were sealed by a judge at the request of prosecutors, according to Bloomberg.
Gassnola pleaded guilty in late March to one felony count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was released on $50,000 bond.
No schools are mentioned in Gassnola’s charging documents.
Gassnola was identified by Yahoo Sports and other media outlets as “Co-conspirator-3” when the FBI announced new charges against Adidas executive Jim Gatto earlier this month. Those charges formally included Kansas and North Carolina State in schemes that alleged payments to lure prospects.
The indictment alleges Gassnola and others “participated in a scheme to defraud certain universities, by making, agreeing to make, and concealing, including through false representations and pretenses, payments to the families of high school student-athletes in connection with the student-athletes’ commitment to play basketball for those universities, thereby causing the universities to provide athletic scholarships to those student-athletes who, in truth and in fact, were ineligible to compete as a result of the payments.”
“Prior to being charged, the defendant participated in numerous proffer sessions during which he has disclosed his criminal activities and those of others,” prosecutors said of Gassnola. “The government anticipates that grand jury subpoenas may be issued based on information provided by the defendant, and that information provided by the defendant may also be presented to a grand jury in this district for purposes of obtaining an indictment.”
Gassnola ran the Adidas-sponsored and Massachusetts-based New England Playaz AAU basketball program, but has reportedly stepped down from his role with the team.
In February, according to the Courier Journal, a Yahoo Sports report appeared to show Gassnola received thousands of dollars from the ASM Sports agency, and in 2012 his program was barred from participating in NCAA-certified events for one year, when he and several other youth basketball program directors were accused of breaking an NCAA rule and associating with a sports agent, namely ASM Sports founder Andy Miller.
Federal prosecutors in New York unveiled charges in September against assistant coaches, managers, financial advisers and sportswear company executives as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe into college athletics, including basketball programs at Oklahoma State University, the University of Arizona, the University of Southern California and the University of South Carolina.
Adidas in the fall said it launched an internal investigation following news of the corruption scandal. In a statement released in March when Kansas and North Carolina State were mentioned as participants in the bribery case, Adidas said the company “is committed to ethical and fair business practices and to full compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations. We have cooperated fully with the authorities in the course of their investigation and will continue to do so as this case proceeds.”
Photo courtesy Adidas
