NCAA Judge Goes Easy on Convicts, Hard on College Basketball
- Gatto gets nine months in prison; Code and Dawkins get six
- Acts like theirs are alleged with ‘some frequency,’ judge says
Former Adidas executive James Gatto arrives to court for sentencing in New York on March 5.
Photographer: Seth Wenig/AP Photo
A federal judge sent three men caught in a federal probe of college basketball kickbacks to prison but gave them relatively lenient sentences for a striking reason: Corruption, he implied, is common in the sport.
Two weeks before the annual college basketball tournament known as March Madness, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced former Adidas AG executive James Gatto to nine months, while Merl Code, a consultant with ties to Adidas, and agent Christian Dawkins each got six.