I'm sorry, I don't buy that argument at all. I cannot think of one legitimate reason why anyone, irrespective of their net worth, would need to withdraw $200k in cash. What sort of above board transaction would involve $200k payment in cash rather than via wire transfer?Originally Posted by Hoosier Red
The reason doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if there's an above board reason for it or not. People can take out that much money, and it's not the least bit illegal to take it out. If you, or the NCAA, were to ask all the banks in Alabama for a list of all the people who had withdrawn more than $50K from their bank accounts in one period, they'd come back with the same number of people on their list as they started. ZERO
I'm not claiming that the bank can stop you from withdrawing that kind of cash, I objected to the statement that if you've got the money to pay $200k to a recruit that you likely that it is likely that you've taken out that much cash for other reasons.
That said, when you take out that kind of cash you create a paper trail. Your financial institution is required by law to report suspicious activity to the Treasury Department, including all transactions involving over $10k in cash. When you're talking about an amount as much as $200k, you can pretty much guarantee somebody is going to investigate exactly what is going on. And while it may not be per se illegal to pay a player to attend your college of choice, you'd better have the rest of your house in order because if not you may find yourself in hot water.
I think you are severely underestimating the investigative powers of
1) The NCAA
2) The Media
3) Anyone with an axe to grind against Auburn (That's everyone in SEC-Land except Auburn fans)
When there is blood in the water, as we have here, keeping something like this quiet and getting away with it will be quite a feat in this day and age.
Prepaid debit cards are the new fad with regard to paying recruits, parents and coaches these days.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
In today's banking world withdrawing $200K does and should raise a red flag. It is extremely easy to transfer money from one account to another using an ACH transfer. You can wire money, for a fee, but that can be debatable due to the size of bank account. We are in a financial environment where people don't have a high level of cash lying around. $200K in a bank making a small interest rate is a heck of a lot better than $200K stored in a safe at your house. And lets be honest here, while having that amount of money in cash isn't illegal, odds are it will be used for something that is illegal (or against NCAA rules in this situation).
So lets assume that an anonymous donor decides to pay Cam Newton $200K to attend Auburn. He doesn't have that money lying around his house, so he makes a withdraw from a bank. The Bank then has to notify the treasury department of the withdraw. There is nothing illegal here, just a bank following regulation. (IIRC the regulation was put in place because of the drug trade years ago). So you have one flag raised and a trail of money. Then if Newton's father's church has a mysterious increase in cash donations over the course of a couple of weeks that raises another red flag. If a church is struggling to make it, an increase of $200K should and will raise alarms, even if it is done gradually.
There is nothing illegal with what happened here. Although you could make an argument that there are some tax considerations that need to be taken care of. The issue is it is against NCAA rules and regulations for eligibility.
I think this has John Brantley's fingerprints all over it....
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23Start...tonRumorsIsFun
Some of these are pretty good.
You're right that it would be odd to take out $200K in cash for any purpose when it is easier to simply wire the funds, or use bank notes, etc.
That's true that it's red flagged and a paper trail is established so to speak. My point has been that the Treasury will look at it, but if there's no illegal use, they can't do anything. I'm admittedly not a lawyer, and I'm no longer a banker, but we still haven't gotten to how the NCAA would come across the information.
There may be a leak, somewhere in the process, who could confirm such a money withdrawl took place, but I don't know if they'd be able to prove anything from that leak without violating some pretty serious laws regarding a person's privacy.
Perhaps you're correct, but does the NCAA really have that much investigative power? It took years to conclude the Reggie Bush investigation and they were much more flippant about showing how much money he was taking in.I think you are severely underestimating the investigative powers of
1) The NCAA
2) The Media
3) Anyone with an axe to grind against Auburn (That's everyone in SEC-Land except Auburn fans)
When there is blood in the water, as we have here, keeping something like this quiet and getting away with it will be quite a feat in this day and age.
There's a difference between finding a lot of circumstantial evidence, which has been done, and finding something that proves Auburn/Newton are guilty.
My point was always that if you took out that cash, it may raise red flags, but unless something illegal was done with the funds, there's little power anyone in the media or the NCAA, or anyone outside of federal authorities can do to find the information.
This does however bring up an interesting point, I've been discussing this as if nothing illegal was done. However, if say the father received the money, put it through his church as a donation, and after bringing the church up to code paid the remainder to himself, that's probably going to raise some serious legal questions which could bring up an investigation from federal law enforcement officials which would of course prove or disprove who the money came from.
So in this case, it may not be able to be done, but in general it probably makes the most sense when shopping for recruits to just do as Randy Moss does, and pay "straight cash homey."
Starting to look worse and worse for Auburn...
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5792707
So far, I'm not sure how much Newton is at fault, but unfortunately for him his father seems to be very complicit. And if these allegations are true, Auburn is in big trouble.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
Yeah, I'm normally a don't rush to judgment guy, but it's getting awfully tough to not draw conclusions.
He's either guilty or not. The scenario where there's no truth to any of this seems incredibly unlikely at this point. There are only a couple of possibilities. First, the guy from MSU was making it all up. That's clearly not the case as it went as far as to be reported to the NCAA.
I think we can all assume Rogers did approach him about Newton. The question becomes whether or not he did it on his own. That leads to the next possibility, Rogers did it without knowledge of the Newtons. This isn't entirely unfathomable, but he's now coming out publicly to attempt to set the record straight. This is possible, but still seems somewhat unlikely... even more unlikely considering Rogers actually names a booster by name. That's risky business if there's no truth to it.
To make the scenario where it's not true feasible, it now requires that these "unnamed sources" were either fabricated by ESPN or Fox Sports reporters (I can't remember which one broke this story), or are somehow complicit with either Rogers or the guy from MSU in fabricating the story.
Now, I'm not one to put complete faith in unnamed sources, but I can certainly see why they would want to remain anonymous. And it just doesn't seem likely that a couple of guys decided they'd insert themselves into the story out of the blue. And it also doesn't seem likely that a news outlet would make it up either.
When you start breaking it down, the scenario where Newton is innocent just doesn't seem believable at all. I hope it is all false. I'm first and foremost a lover of college football and this is terrible for the sport. Cam Newton is a great player and he's having an other-worldly season. I'd hate to see this turn out to be true. It just seems highly unlikely at this point.
Last edited by MWM; 11-11-2010 at 08:06 PM.
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
Actually its starting to look really bad for MSU. They were still recruiting him a month after Rogers supposedly asked for money? They also apparently weren't fully forthcoming with the NCAA when they finally did get around to reporting Rogers.
Meanwhile the guy supposedly soliciting money has no knowledge of details concerning Auburn's recruitment of Newton and an audit of thousands of phone calls during the period they were recruiting Newton failed to turn up any ties between Rogers and Auburn.
Newton's Dad may have entertained the notion of getting money for Cam's commitment but its becoming increasingly apparent that he didn't get any from Auburn and the NCAA is neither investigating Auburn nor threatening Cam's eligibility though presumably they've known these facts since the spring.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
If Cam's dad even solicited money for a commitment from his son, even if he wound up at another university for free, that's all it will take. He'll be done.
Jojo, do you really believe this is all smoke an no fire? If you believe that then you put ZERO credence is the sources who claim to have heard from Cam after his acceptance to Auburn where he claimed the money was too much to pass up. Look, I'm not one to automatically assume these things are truth, but I also tend to not believe these types of things are completely fabricated.
And it could be that he had no knowledge of Auburn's recruitment because he didn't actually play at Auburn with one of the coaches. But that's just me.
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
I don't see how you would get the impression that someone asking for nearly $200k for his son's services would suddenly just go somewhere else for nothing. That seems like a real stretch. If what is being alleged here is true, it's really far fetched to think Auburn (or at least an Auburn booster) did everything by the books.
Further, since we're assuming this story is true, it's hard to ignore the following comment:
If you now accept that the allegations are true, or at least very well could be, it's hard to accept anything that leaves Auburn clean in this mess. If the father had his hand out, there's just no rational way of concluding that he didn't go to the highest bidder -- or at least someone willing to pay near what he was asking.After Newton committed to Auburn, another source said an emotional Cam Newton phoned another recruiter to express regret that he wouldn't be going to Mississippi State, stating that his father, Cecil, had chosen Auburn for him because "the money was too much."
Mississippi State might be facing some collateral damage, I'll grant you, but Auburn is in serious trouble if the allegations in these reports are factual. These kinds of details often wind up being rather damning.
If Cecil Newton had his hand out, it's not likely he suddenly called off the dogs and had his son go to Auburn just for the heck of it.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
So jojo, what are you suggesting most likely happened?
Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David
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