FMTT’s on this one, it’s called Adidas bought the judge.
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, 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.
Gatto had faced 46 to 57 months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, while Code and Dawkins each faced 30 to 37 months. In imposing the lighter sentences, Kaplan said that the men had led “good and productive lives” and “learned their lesson.”
And, he added, similar acts had been committed in college basketball “with some frequency.”