Basketball sports agency ASM Sports is under scrutiny by U.S. prosecutors investigating corruption in college basketball, as FBI agents raided its offices Tuesday just hours after one of its former employees was arrested.
Agents from the FBI’s Newark bureau seized the computer of firm founder Andy Miller from ASM’s Englewood, New Jersey, headquarters, according to two people familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment.
“I can’t really answer anything right now,” Miller said in a brief phone call Wednesday morning.
The raid signals that the Justice Department’s probe into illicit kickbacks in college basketball may be broader than initially appeared after prosecutors arrested 10 coaches, managers, financial advisers and representatives of sportswear companies. Miller, who hasn’t been charged with wrongdoing, has represented professional basketball players for more than 20 years and is one of the industry’s top agents.
ASM’s clients include more than two dozen active NBA players with contracts totaling more than $500 million, according to Forbes. New York Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis and the Toronto Raptors’ guard Kyle Lowry and forward Serge Ibaka are among the stars he represents.
The telephone at ASM’s headquarters was disconnected Wednesday, and the office was shuttered.
ASM matches the description of a firm identified in court filings as “Sports Management Company-1.” According to court papers, agent Christian Dawkins, one of the 10 charged, was an employee of the unidentified firm from 2015 to May 2017, when he was fired.
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Dawkins is accused of helping Jim Gatto, then an Adidas AG executive, and college coaches make illegal payments to high school players or their families in exchange for commitments to play for universities sponsored by Adidas, and to sign with Adidas after they turn professional.
Dawkins’ lawyer declined to comment on Tuesday after he appeared in court in Manhattan.
In 2012, the National Collegiate Athletic Association banned four elite youth club teams from participating in its summer basketball events — a key recruiting forum — for associating with an agent. That agent was Miller, who was found to have emailed the teams’ directors offering to “lend support” to the teams, according to media reports.
The teams were in the Amateur Athletic Union, a coalition of grass-roots leagues that often serve as proving grounds for future stars. An AAU team surfaced in Tuesday’s charges. According to prosecutors, the unidentified team served as a conduit in the payment this summer of a $100,000 bribe from Adidas to the family of an unnamed player to steer him to University of Louisville in Kentucky. Dawkins helped set up the transaction starting in May, prosecutors said.
James Gatto, an Adidas executive charged in the case, and another defendant balked at making the payment directly from the company to the family because it was illegal, according to the complaint. Instead, the initial $25,000 cash installment of the payment — which was provided by an undercover FBI agent — was reimbursed with Adidas funds that were wired into the account of an AAU team, and then paid through Dawkins, prosecutors said.
Gatto’s lawyer didn’t immediately return a call on Wednesday.
— With assistance by David Voreacos
