AAU Coach Pleads Innocent
An AAU coach charged with defrauding four major basketball schools by paying high school players was ordered held without bond after he pleaded innocent Monday.
Myron Piggie is accused in a federal indictment of defrauding UCLA, Duke, Missouri and Oklahoma State after the universities gave scholarships to the players he is accused of paying.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Larsen ordered no bond after witnesses testified they were threatened by Piggie.
Piggie also pleaded innocent to a federal charge of weapons possession by a convicted felon. Police and federal prosecutors say Piggie, who has a 1988 conviction for selling crack cocaine, was carrying a weapon when he was stopped for a traffic violation last December.
Piggie, named in a federal grand jury indictment handed down Wednesday and unsealed Thursday, could face up to 49 years in prison without parole and up to $1.85 million in fines.
According to the indictment, Piggie, of Kansas City, paid JaRon Rush of UCLA $17,000, Kareem Rush of Missouri $2,300, Corey Maggette of Duke $2,000, Andre Williams of Oklahoma State $250 and Korleone Young $14,000.
The indictment against Piggie alleges the universities were defrauded when they awarded scholarships to players who were not amateurs because they had accepted payments for playing in AAU tournament games.
Young, of Wichita, Kan., skipped college to enter the NBA draft. He is now playing minor league basketball.
JaRon Rush has not yet confirmed a report by the Los Angeles Daily News that he will enter the NBA draft. He and Kareem Rush, his younger brother, both played at Kansas City's Pembroke Hill High School.
Piggie also was accused of helping JaRon Rush lease a car on the condition that he not accept a basketball scholarship from Kansas, and of contacting sports agents with the help of George Raveling, a Nike consultant and former coach at Iowa and Southern California.
Raveling, who testified before the grand jury that indicted Piggie, was not charged.
The Rush brothers and Williams were suspended by their schools for varying periods. Those cases have since been resolved by the NCAA with the Rush brothers each missing nine games and Williams five. Maggette was never declared ineligible in his one season at Duke.
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