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NEW YORK – Former Oklahoma State and University of South Carolina assistant basketball coach was sentenced Friday to three months in jail for accepting bribes to put players in touch high level with managers and financial advisers.
US District Judge Edgardo Ramos said Lamont Evans' actions were "perhaps more blatant" than those of two other former basketball coaches he had sentenced earlier in the week. He also ordered him to lose $ 22,000 and work 100 hours in the service of the community.
Evidence against Evans contained records, including one in which he had promised that the athletes he had recruited would sign with the directors and financial advisers he had recommended.
"All the others coming in. I'm going to bury them," he was told, during a phone conversation that had taken place during a recent trial of the co-accused.
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When Ramos announced his sentence, he referred to letters written by friends and family of Evans telling the good deeds he had done, especially on behalf of the youth.
"The people who wrote these letters will not recognize the Lamont Evans that appears in government videos," said the judge.
Evans, 41, told the judge that he thought he had found "an easy way to make money" by accepting $ 22,000 in bribes to work on behalf of the managers. athletes paying bribes in 2016 and 2017.
"Looking back and thinking, I knew it was wrong," he said.
While he was coming out of the courtroom and meeting with several reporters, Evans said, "It's one of the saddest days of my life."
The prosecutors did not get the punishment of at least 18 months in prison, as they had requested.
US Deputy Attorney Robert Boone had claimed that Evans was more guilty than the other people arrested in the investigation because he had solicited bribes and gifts, including headphones, and had traveled several times across the country for meetings.
"It was not a situation where people paying bribes came to his house and threw him money," said Boone.
With his arrest in September 2017, Evans lost his $ 600,000 job and the likelihood that he eventually became head coach. At the time, he was at Oklahoma State.
His plea of guilty in January for conspiracy to bribe could also lead to his expulsion from the country where he has lived since the age of 2 years. He is a citizen of Barbados.
Evans has been indicted in a case revealing the role of corrupt coaches in a program aimed at directing NBA youth to schools or managers.
He was among four coaches who were charged. All pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe.
On Thursday, Emanuel "Book" Richardson, a former basketball assistant coach at the University of Arizona, was sentenced to three months in prison.
On Wednesday, Tony Bland, a former basketball assistant coach at the University of Southern California, was sentenced to 100 hours of community work, but no jail time.
Chuck Person, a former assistant coach at Auburn University, is awaiting his sentence.
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