VICTORIA —
The B.C. government has terminated membership in the Order of British Columbia for a former Canadian Football League player involved in a U.S. college admissions cheating scam.

David Sidoo, a former CFL player and businessman from Vancouver, was appointed to the Order of B.C. in July 2016. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in a Boston federal court in March.

On Friday, the province announced it had revoked Sidoo’s membership in the Order of B.C.

“This process is initiated when a member of the order is convicted of a criminal offence or when their conduct undermines the credibility and integrity of the order,” the province said in a statement.

Sidoo was among 50 prominent parents, university athletic coaches and others charged in the scheme, which authorities say involved rigged entrance exams and bogus athletic credentials to make applicants look like star athletes for sports they didn’t play.

Sidoo paid the admissions consultant at the centre of the scheme US$200,000 to have someone pose as his sons using a fake ID to secure higher scores on their SATs, prosecutors said.

Sidoo and nearly two dozen parents, including Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman, pleaded guilty to the charges. Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in prison. Sentences for other parents range from no prison time to nine months behind bars.

Sidoo played professional football for six years for the Saskatchewan Roughriders and BC Lions. He was CEO of mining firm Advantage Lithium Corp. when he was arrested last year and was also a founding shareholder of an oil and gas company that was sold in 2010 for more than $600 million.

With files from The Associated Press

For many from the Chicago area, Oct. 4, 2007, began with the stunning news that Rhoni Reuter, the longtime pregnant girlfriend of former Chicago Bears player Shaun Gayle, had been murdered.

Now Reuter’s convicted killer hopes she’ll be granted a new trial and is speaking out about her case for the first time on television.

“I did not [kill Reuter], and I am not capable of doing anything like [that]. I’m a mother myself, that’s unconscionable to me. Absolutely not,” Marni Yang, a 51-year-old mother of three, told ABC’s Juju Chang in a recent interview for “20/20.”

Reuter, 42, was seven months pregnant when she was found dead on the kitchen floor of her apartment in Deerfield, Illinois. There were no signs of robbery or forced entry at the crime scene. Authorities said she had been shot multiple times at point-blank range with a 9mm handgun, with two shots fired directly at her abdomen. To investigators, it suggested that the shooter was aiming not just at Reuter, but also at the unborn child.

Reuter’s killing rocked the quiet, affluent Chicago suburb. It was the first murder Deerfield had seen in 30 years and Gayle had been a safety on the celebrated Chicago Bears team that won the 1985 Super Bowl.

Gayle had been dating Reuter for 18 years while seeing a number of other women at various times over the years as well, including Yang. It was clear to authorities that someone wanted his pregnant girlfriend dead. During her trial, prosecutors argued that Yang’s motive was fueled by jealousy.

Yang, who has long maintained her innocence, was convicted in 2011 of killing Reuter and is currently serving a double life sentence.

Her new defense attorney Jed Stone filed a post-conviction relief petition in October 2019 citing new evidence that he believes will prove Yang was wrongfully convicted. Yang, who has exhausted all her requests to appeal, hired a new legal team led by Stone in this last attempt for a new trial.

The Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office filed a motion to dismiss Yang’s petition, describing it as a “skillfully, lawyerly rebranding of the facts and the overwhelming evidence against Marni.”

“It’s not a rebranding of the facts,” Stone told “20/20.” “It’s taking a look at the facts, and putting them in a light of truth.”

Who would kill Rhoni Reuter?

Although Gayle and Reuter were together for almost two decades, they never lived together.

Her family say they were surprised when they learned of Gayle’s non-monogamous relationship with Reuter.

“I wouldn’t think that my sister would have put up with that sort of relationship,” her brother, Thad Reuter, told “20/20” in a 2011 interview.

Her sister-in-law, Anna Reuter, agreed, saying, “She loved Shaun with her whole heart, and I think she expected the same back. I really didn’t see any other people in the picture at all.”

On the day Rhoni Reuter’s body was discovered, Gayle called Deerfield police, saying a reporter had called him asking if he knew anything about being named a suspect in a shooting there. When the officer who took the call confirmed to Gayle that Reuter was the victim, the former NFL player broke down in hysterical sobs.

“Don’t go to her house,” the officer told him, and asked him instead to come to the police station.

When Gayle arrived, Deerfield Deputy Chief Rick Wilk said the former NFL player was “visibly upset,” but it was “a little suspicious” to Wilk that Gayle had called within hours of the murder occurring.

During questioning, Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Detective Scott Frost said Gayle became strangely composed.

“He … was very reserved, very calm.,” Frost said.

Frost said he asked Gayle what he had done in the last 24 hours, and that some of his details on timing seemed to be off.

“We’re having issues with his timeline from… what he did the night before, what time did he go to bed, what time did he leave,” Frost said.

On the morning of the murder, Gayle told police he slept in, worked out with a trainer and then got a haircut mid-morning at a barber about 10 minutes away from Reuter’s apartment.

Frost said Gayle insisted he was innocent. Police asked him about other women with whom he had been involved recently.

“He, kindly enough, gives us a list of a list of almost 18, or 16 different women that he either went on a date with or got a phone number from or was romantically involved with… these are 18 women over a three-year period,” Frost said.

“You have several women that could have been jealous of Rhoni,” Wilk added.

When asked who he believed the killer might be, police said Gayle named Monika Kurowska, whom he had a relationship with a year prior and he said it had ended badly.

Kurowska was a Polish fitness model and personal trainer, whom Gayle said he had dated for several months in 2006.

Gayle said one night Kurowska came to his apartment complex and began ringing his neighbors’ buzzers. He found her outside of his apartment with a bloody hand, and later discovered one of his windows had been broken. Gayle eventually obtained a protective order against her.

In a statement to ABC News, Kurowska said she was upset when she got to Gayle’s home and saw him with another woman. She says she wanted to speak to him, but he wouldn’t open the door. She knocked on his window, and in the heat of her frustration, she said she accidentally broke it. She said she decided to end the relationship and that she never saw Gayle again.

Gayle told police he believed Kurowska was sending harassing letters to various people in his life, including Reuter, her mother and other women he had been seeing. The anonymous letters were written in broken English and claimed Gayle was romancing a number of women at the same time.

When Rhoni Reuter’s mother received one of these letters, she called Gayle. He assured her that her daughter was safe and that the letters were from “a crazed fan,” according to Thad Reuter.

When Rhoni Reuter’s body was found, detectives recovered one of these letters inside her purse.

While being questioned by investigators, Kurowska denied sending the letters and said she was at a training session with a client when Rhoni Reuter was murdered, which checked out.

Police cleared Kurowska as a suspect, and eventually cleared Gayle as well. Soon, they began focusing on another woman Gayle had been casually seeing: Marni Yang.

The mysterious letters

Yang, a divorced mother of three who worked multiple jobs, including as a real estate agent, said she met Gayle at a Bears convention where she was working security. She said the two started seeing each other after he reached out to her about investing in real estate.

When police first called Yang in for questioning regarding the Reuter investigation two months after the murder, she told them she and Gayle had known each other for about six years.

As part of their investigation, the police obtained a warrant to search his house, which included seizing his computer.

After gaining access to his email, investigators told Gayle that they believed Yang had been accessing his email for years, but Yang denies this.

“There is absolutely no way that I would even have had access to anything like that,” she told “20/20.”

Though police said other people they interviewed within her circle told them Yang often bragged about being Gayle’s girlfriend, she denied that was the case.

“I don’t think the word ‘boyfriend’ was ever used, really,” she told “20/20.” “That was not what I referred to him as.”

Investigators suspected that Yang was the one responsible for sending harassing letters to Reuter, her mother and other women in Gayle’s life. They believed she had discovered emails from Kurowska in Gayle’s inbox and copied her pattern of broken English to make it appear as if the letters had come from Kurowska.

During a search of Yang’s house, police said they discovered mailing labels with the addresses of the women in Gayle’s life — the same ones who had received the letters.

Yang denies she had sent the letters and claims instead that she was one of the women who received such a letter.

Police discovered that she had owned a 9mm handgun, which used bullets that matched the caliber of the ones found at the crime scene. Yang had also purchased two volumes of a book with instructions on how to make a homemade silencer and then bought the materials listed in the book at a Home Depot store, according to prosecutors.

Yang told police she didn’t have the gun at the time the murder took place; in her post-conviction relief petition, she claims that her son’s friend has admitted to stealing it from her home during a get-together months before the murder. She told “20/20” the book was part of “a gag gift” for a former police officer she had dated. “Firearms are a hobby of his,” she said.

According to prosecutors, one of the most damning pieces of evidence against Yang was a recorded conversation she had with a close friend, Christi Paschen, who calls herself a professional psychic. Yang has said Paschen was only an acquaintance.

During the conversation, Yang told Paschen, who was secretly working with investigators and wearing a recording device, that she had put on an elaborate disguise and shot Reuter. That disguise, prosecutors say, seemed to match witnesses’ description of the suspect on the day of the murder.

“[Reuter] started screaming … At that point, I realized we are now at the point of no return, OK? … And I just started emptying the clip,” Yang is heard telling Paschen on the recording. “I took maybe one or two steps into the kitchen to finish the job.”

On March 15, 2011, Yang was found guilty of first-degree murder and intentional homicide of an unborn child. She was given a double life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Marni Yang: ‘I knew perfectly well that I was being recorded’

Sitting in Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, Illinois, Yang opened up about her case for the first time in front of a TV camera.

“I feel like prior to this, I don’t think it would have mattered,” she told “20/20.” “I feel like there is a time. That time is now.”

The crux of Yang’s defense is that she now claims that she knew Paschen was wired and falsely confessed to the murder on purpose in order to protect her son, whom she believed police were investigating as the murder suspect.

“I knew perfectly well that I was being recorded,” Yang said. “I saw the wire.”

Her attorney Jed Stone claims there are recorded phone calls between Yang and her parents that took place before her conversation with Paschen, in which Yang told them she planned to make up a story about the murder and “let the attorneys sort it out with police.”

“It was a rash and ill-conceived decision to protect my children,” Yang said. “I lied.”

In its motion to dismiss Yang’s post-conviction relief petition, the state says that three months after the murder, when police interrogated Yang over a number of days, they told her repeatedly that her son was not a suspect.

During her trial, prosecutors pointed to a surveillance video from a gas station in Reuter’s neighborhood that showed a car driving near the scene around the time of the murder, which they said matched the description of the one Yang had rented that same week.

Yang’s defense team argued in its post-conviction relief petition that the prosecutors got the make and model of the car wrong.

In response, the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office says Yang’s defense team made similar arguments at trial, which the jury rejected.

Yang, an aspiring fitness model, now claims she had car trouble that day and that she had rented the car for a photoshoot. However, when asked about it during her interview with “20/20”, she couldn’t remember the name of the photographer with whom she was working.

Her defense team also claims that ballistics evidence proves the person who shot Reuter was much taller than Yang, who is only 5 feet tall.

“I think the strongest piece of evidence that we have is the scientific evidence of the bullet trajectories, showing that Marni Yang, because of her height, could not have fired the bullets that killed Rhoni Reuter,” Stone told “20/20.”

In response, the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office says that the conclusion that the shooter was someone taller than Yang is flawed. They said the defense relied on the medical examiner’s report, which stated that a particular wound was going downward. However, when the medical examiner testified at trial, he said that after examining the tissue he determined that wound was actually going upward.

The state also argues that many of the statements that Yang’s defense team filed as part of the petition were not notarized or were not sworn to, and therefore those claims should be dismissed.

The petition filed by Yang’s legal team includes a number of allegations from her children about the investigation and the case against their mother, including that police forced two of her children to sign written statements they knew to be false.

Yang’s children, Emily, Andrew and Brandon Yang, were home alone when police showed up with a search warrant at their house three months after the murder. Just 16 years old at the time, Emily and Andrew said they were brought to different police stations and questioned separately without a parent or attorney present.

“The only way that I got out of that situation was to write down a statement … that my mother wasn’t home the morning of the murder… but she was home that morning,” Andrew Yang said, adding that he “had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized” after the ordeal.

At trial, Emily Yang testified that her mother told her she had sent those harassing letters so that all the women Gayle was involved with could find out about each other. But she now says that police told her to write that in her statement.

“I didn’t know anything and they wouldn’t accept that. And … the mental frustration, it really broke me,” Emily Yang said. “And it got to the point where I started banging my head on the table.”

The State’s Attorney’s Office denies the children’s statements were coerced. They said when Emily Yang testified she never said her statement to the police was a lie.

Yang’s children are standing by their mother now in support of her defense.

“I would just say to her that … no matter… everything that she’s been through, [she can] be proud that she’s raised … a really good young man,” Andrew Yang told “20/20.”

“I’m hoping that we can all get through this together,” Emily Yang added.

Marni Yang’s father, Larry Merar, has paid around $1 million for her defense. It’s money that Stone acknowledged could have gone to help support Merar’s grandchildren while their mother is in prison, but more so, he added, “it bothers me greatly that Larry Merar can’t do this for 9,000 other people… in America’s prisons and jails who are innocent.”

Although a judge ruled in December 2019 that her petition can move forward, the next step in the proceedings for Marni Yang’s case has been put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. A few weeks ago, she cited the health crisis in a new petition for clemency, which is scheduled to be heard in July.

RALEIGH

The trial of the third suspect accused of killing a former Shaw University basketball player ended with a guilty verdict Tuesday but no one convicted of murder.

On August 27, 2017, Quentin Judd was found face down on the ground, surrounded by bullet casings at an apartment on Wolf Glen Court in Southwest Raleigh, according to a medical examiner. He died at the hospital from a bullet through his heart.

The 6-foot, 4-inch Judd was 23 years old and and set to transfer to the University of Lynchburg, Virginia. He was “full of potential,” prosecutor Luke Bumm said during closing arguments this week for the trial of Barry McCrae Jr., one of three people accused in the killing.

McCrae, 25, was convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, possession with intent to sell and distribute marijuana and maintaining a dwelling for a controlled substance. He was found not guilty of first-degree murder.

McCrae was sentenced to 13 years and 1 month to 16 years and 9 months in prison for the conspiracy charge and 6 months to 17 months for the drug charges.

His cousin, Kevin Powell III, 23, and Tyra Washington, 21, who were initially charged with murder, had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Powell pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact, and Washington pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit second-degree murder.

McCrae was also a student at the time Judd died and played football for Shaw. His lawyer, Jeffrey Cutler, told the jury in his closing argument that the state had failed to meet its burden of proof.

Witnesses’ testimony

Those testifying at the trial included Washington; Thomas Johnson, a man McCrae shared a jail cell with; and several detectives.

Washington said McCrae was after Judd because he had broken into his car to steal something.

McCrae, who was living with Washington at the time, told her to text Judd to come to their apartment to have sex with her, she testified.

When Judd got to Wolf Glen Court, he exchanged texts with Washington, but she stopped replying to him.

He was shot in a breezeway under a staircase at the apartment complex.

Cutler argued Washington was not trustworthy because she changed her testimony, even providing information on the stand that no one had heard before about a gun missing from her apartment.

He also said text messages from Washington to Judd raised questions about her testimony because she does not ask Judd to come to her apartment until much later in the messages.

McCrae did not testify in court.

Detectives said he told them he was not at the apartment complex initially, but when they found his cell phone records, he admitted being there with someone else, Bumm said.

Cutler said McCrae cooperated with law enforcement and let them search his car and the apartment he shared with Washington, where they found six pounds of marijuana, packaged using many layers, which a detective opened while testifying in court.

Johnson, whom McCrae met in jail, said in a letter to the detective on McCrae’s case that he had information about the murder and he was asked to get in touch with Washington and McCrae’s girlfriend.

In court, Johnson initially pleaded the Fifth Amendment, which allows people to not testify to avoid implicating themselves in a crime. However, Judge Andrew Heath insisted he testify because he felt Johnson’s answers would not incriminate him.

Johnson said McCrae asked him to reach out to Washington and admitted the handwriting in the letter to the detective was his.

‘I still got nothing to do with it.’

McCrae sat in court dressed in a white shirt, his hair braided back and wearing glasses with small rectangular lenses. His sister let out gasps when they heard the jury had found him not guilty of murder. She teared up as a clerk read the rest of the verdict.

McCrae apologized, but denied killing Judd when given an opportunity to speak before sentencing.

“My sister is going to watch her brother go to prison,” he said. “I still got nothing to do with it.”

“Y’all make me out to be this monster,” McCrae said to Bumm.

On the other side of the courtroom sat Judd’s legal guardians, who declined to be identified by their names. Judd’s mother, whom Bumm identified as Ms. White, stressed how losing Judd affected the family.

“My heart was ripped to shreds, blood pressure through the roof,” she said. “My husband barely holding it together, trying to mask his anger and be strong.”

She said Quentin was also a father of a 7-year-old.

The last time Ms. White said she heard Judd’s voice was in a voicemail on Aug. 25, 2017. “Hey ma, I just wanted to let you know I love you.”

SAN DIEGO — A California jury that convicted former NFL player Kellen Winslow Jr. of raping a 58-year-old homeless woman has been ordered to return to deliberations Tuesday after deadlocking on eight other charges against him, including two additional counts of rape involving a 54-year-old hitchhiker and an unconscious teen.

A jury on Monday in San Diego Superior Court in Vista found the son of a Hall of Famer guilty of the attack last year on the homeless woman in his picturesque beach community of Encinitas, north of San Diego.

The jury also found the 35-year-old former tight end guilty of indecent exposure and lewd conduct involving two other women, but jurors found him not guilty of one count of a lewd act.

Winslow, who played for Cleveland, Tampa Bay, New England and the New York Jets, faces up to life in prison if convicted of all counts.

All five women testified during the nine-day trial. Winslow did not take the stand.

Defense attorneys pointed out inconsistencies in the accusers’ testimonies and argued the women invented the allegations to prey on the wealth of Winslow, who reportedly earned over $40 million during his 10 seasons with the NFL.

Prosecutors say the son of Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow felt empowered by his fame to abuse the most vulnerable.

Prosecutor Dan Owens told the jury of eight men and four women that Winslow is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The five women testified that they didn’t know Winslow was famous when they met him.

The homeless woman in Encinitas, who was 58 at the time, testified that he befriended her and attacked her next to his vehicle after inviting her for a coffee in May 2018.

A 54-year-old hitchhiker said he drove her to an Encinitas shopping center parking lot and raped her in his Hummer in March 2018.

A 57-year-old woman said he exposed himself to her while she tended to her garden in May of 2018. The jury found him guilty of that charge Monday.

After news of the attacks broke, a woman came forward and said Winslow had raped her when she was a 17-year-old high school student in 2003. He was 19 at the time and had come home from college for the summer.

A 77-year-old woman who went to the same gym as Winslow in the nearby beach community of Carlsbad said he committed lewd acts in front of her, including touching himself, while Winslow was free on $2 million bail in February. The jury found him guilty of touching himself in front of the woman while she exercised, but not guilty of committing a lewd act in front of her on a separate occasion in the gym’s hot tub.

After the jury sent a note saying it was deadlocked on the eight other charges, the judge sent them back to deliberate. They went home less than an hour later and were ordered to return Tuesday.

Jurors on Friday sent a note to the judge indicating it was struggling to reach agreement.

“The jurors could benefit from an explanation as to what being under oath means,” the note said. “Additionally, how we should follow the law and not what we think the law means.”

The judge told jurors being under oath means telling the whole truth and that they should follow the law how it is written.

Defense attorney Marc Carlos questioned the credibility of the women’s claims, saying they had lied, misconstrued things or were unable to initially identify him correctly.

Defense lawyers also said the sex was consensual and that Winslow had cheated on his wife repeatedly with no-strings-attached sex.

Prosecutors said the crux of the women’s stories didn’t change and that evidence included traces of Winslow’s DNA on one of the accuser’s pants and GPS locations placing him where the women said the assaults occurred.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.–ESPN reports Brandon Banks, the former Vanderbilt University football player charged with rape, was with Jameis Winston the night the alleged groping of an Uber driver by the Buccaneers quarterback.

Winston was suspended for three games by the NFL on Friday due to allegations made by an Arizona Uber driver. The woman claims in 2016 she gave Winston a ride and he allegedly grabbed her crotch while in a drive thru to get food.

Winston has previously claimed the woman was confused and stated there were two other men in the car who could have been responsible.

According to ESPN, those two men were Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Ronald Darby and Brandon Banks. ESPN cites a statement made by Banks’ attorney Mark Scruggs who said Banks and Darby were not in the vehicle and instead sent Winston home in another Uber.

Banks had not yet been convicted of aggravated rape at the time of the allegations. Banks was convicted in June of last year on the charge and is serving 15 years in prison.

A former Cerritos College football player, from Hemet, was convicted Thursday of raping a college student in 2016, officials said.

Kishawn Holmes, 22, after less than a day of jury deliberation, was found guilty of forcible rape, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a news statement.

Holmes is scheduled to be sentenced May 2 at the Norwalk branch of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, prosecutors said. He faces a maximum possible sentence of 18 years in state prison and lifetime sex offender registration.

The crime took place Sept. 8, 2016, when Holmes invited a fellow college student to his Norwalk apartment and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said. She was 19.

The victim alerted law enforcement about the attack some three months later in January, prosecutors said. Holmes was arrested about a month after.

Holmes had been previously accused of rape and other sex crimes while he was a student and football player at Vista Murrieta High School.

He was 17 then and arrested and charged with crimes against six underage female victims.

The charges included two counts of forcible rape, two counts of lewd acts with a girl under 14 and three counts of false imprisonment, as well as one count of dissuading a victim from reporting a crime. Holmes’ family and attorney had said the charges were unfounded.

He pleaded guilty to rape by force in April 2014, Riverside County District Attorney’s Office spokesman John Hall said in a previous story.

Holmes played football at Vista Murrieta, where he transferred after attending West Valley High School in Hemet.

His performance on the field in high school earned him at least one scholarship from a Division I school, Oklahoma State University.

Monty Grow, a former University of Florida and NFL player who made a small fortune selling pharmaceutical drugs, took the unusual step of testifying in his trial on charges of swindling millions from a federal program that provides medical insurance for the U.S. military.

The 46-year-old Grow was hit again and again with questions by a federal prosecutor about receiving and paying kickbacks to score lucrative patient referrals for a major South Florida pharmacy.

“You were essentially buying and selling patients for a pharmacy?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jon Juenger pressed Grow.

“No, I was not,” he said calmly.

On Monday, a dozen Miami federal jurors found that they did not believe him.

The jury unanimously convicted Grow of a healthcare fraud conspiracy for bilking $20 million from the TRICARE program for military members, veterans and their families. He was also convicted of conspiring to receive and pay kickbacks for referring hundreds of military beneficiaries to the Pompano Beach-based pharmacy, Patient Care America, as well as of money laundering. But Grow, who remained stoic while the guilty verdicts were read, was acquitted of numerous other related charges.

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno ordered that Grow, who lives in Tampa, be taken into custody immediately by U.S. marshals because of the amount of money involved in the healthcare fraud case. He faces up to 20 years in prison at his sentencing hearing on April 16.

The jury, which was given instructions on kickbacks and other legal issues by Moreno at the end of the six-day trial, had to decide whether Grow intentionally defrauded the government program or was simply paid lavish but legitimate commissions by the pharmacy for referring the TRICARE patients.

“We are disappointed with the verdict,” Grow’s defense attorneys, Daniel Rashbaum and Jeffrey Marcus, said. “We think that the acquittal on more than half of the counts after four days of deliberation is inconsistent with the result and makes little sense. We will continue to fight for Mr. Grow, who is an innocent man.”

Grow was accused in a 49-count indictment of hiring an independent marketing team — including former University of Florida star and retired NFL quarterback Shane Matthews — in the conspiracy to fleece the TRICARE program.

Last week, Matthews, 47, who played with the Chicago Bears, Miami Dolphins and other teams over a 14-year pro career, was sentenced to three months in prison for his bit role working for Grow’s marketing company. Matthews was paid $440,000 for lining up sales representatives who then landed TRICARE patients for the pharmacy.

Grow and his network of sales representatives referred about 700 patients to Patient Care America, which received $40 million from the government program for supplying costly pain and scar creams along with wellness vitamins between 2014 and 2015. For those referrals, PCA paid half of those federal reimbursements to Grow under a contract agreement. With his cut of the taxpayer funds, Grow kept $10 million for himself and paid out the rest in kickbacks to his marketing associates who recruited TRICARE patients. The sales representatives acted as independent contractors, akin to Avon or Mary Kay reps.

Eventually, Grow himself went from being an independent contractor to a full-time employee for Patient Care America, which factored into his acquittals on numerous kickback charges.

At trial, prosecutors said many of the military members who were referred by his marketing network to Patient Care America did not need the costly compounds, which are specially mixed medications unlike typical commercial drugs. Many only agreed to buy the compound medications because Grow and his sales team paid kickbacks to the patients, who also referred other family members to the pharmacy. Prosecutors said Grow’s team covered patients’ expensive co-payments for the creams and vitamins. One sales representative even paid her stable of patients $1,000 each for filling out a customer survey after receiving their medications from the pharmacy.

The 2016 indictment accusing Grow of conspiracy, fraud, kickbacks and money laundering did not charge Patient Care America or any of its top executives — though prosecutors described them at trial as “unindicted co-conspirators.”

Throughout the trial, prosecutors portrayed Grow as a clever salesman driven by greed who knew he was breaking the law while he pocketed $13,500 for each of the patients that his marketing company referred to the Broward County pharmacy. He owns a Tampa waterfront home, a Range Rover, a Porsche 911 and has millions in an e-trade stock market account.

“This was a pyramid scheme,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Larsen told the 12-person jury during closing arguments last week. “He took advantage of these folks and he made millions. … The bottom line is, these people signed up because they were paid [kickbacks].”

Grow’s defense attorneys, Rashbaum and Marcus, depicted the former football player as a lawful, successful businessman whose NFL career as a cornerback was cut short by injury in 1996 after playing for the Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars. They said he began a marketing career in the field of compound pharmacies and later broke out on his own with a Tampa company called MGTEN — his initials and jersey number as a ballplayer.

The defense argued that Grow set up his network of sales representatives to handle hundreds of TRICARE patients and arrange for them to see doctors through “telemedicine” companies. Grow paid the physicians for legitimate consultations, and they approved the vast majority of prescriptions for the compound medications provided by Patient Care America. The defense also said Grow paid his independent contractors “commissions” — not kickbacks — for finding the TRICARE patients.

Grow stood trial alone because an associate with whom he shared millions in kickbacks for the patient referrals pleaded guilty in early January to a conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. Ginger Lay faces up to 10 years in prison but could receive less time for testifying against her former boss.

(Reuters) – The man tried for murder in the road-rage shooting death of former National Football League running back Joe McKnight near New Orleans in 2016 was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter on Friday, local media reported.

The verdict capped six days of testimony and 7-1/2 hours of deliberation by a Jefferson Parish jury in the trial of Ronald Gasser, 56, who admitted to shooting McKnight but said he acted in self-defense, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the news website NOLA.com.

The deadly confrontation between Gasser and McKnight, 28, occurred at a traffic intersection in the New Orleans suburb of Terrytown, where the two men stopped their vehicles after shouting vulgarities at each other and driving erratically for about 5 miles.

Gasser had been charged with second-degree murder, meaning that he acted with specific intent to kill but not with premeditation or planning. The jury instead convicted him of manslaughter, essentially a crime of passion.

Prosecutors said after the trial they were happy with the verdict and that McKnight’s family was satisfied as well.

Assistant District Attorney Seth Shute told reporters Gasser faced a possible prison term of up to 40 years when he is sentenced.

Gasser, who did not take the witness stand in his own defense, told investigators that he shot McKnight from the driver’s seat of his car as the former NFL player stood at Gasser’s open passenger-side window on Dec. 1, 2016.

According to Gasser, he feared for his life when McKnight made an aggressive movement, or lunged in such a way as to attempt to get inside his vehicle. Gasser’s lawyer argued that his client was justified in defending himself with lethal force under Louisiana’s so-called “stand-your-ground” law.

But prosecutors said physical evidence, including the lack of gunpowder residue on McKnight’s body, disputed Gasser’s account and showed the two men were farther apart than Gasser has asserted.

McKnight played in the NFL as a running back for the New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs from 2010 through 2014. He later played for the Edmonton Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Canadian Football League.

Carter initially denied the charge but in October it emerged he’d changed his plea to guilty.

The following month, the 25-year-old missed a court appearance because he was in an overseas rehabilitation centre, leading a magistrate to blast his no-show as “absolutely unacceptable”.

His lawyer, Daniel Grippi, at the time said Carter was suffering “significant stress and anxiety”.

Court documents show the cocaine incident occurred a week after his final game for the Roosters, when Carter went out with team mates Kenny-Dowall, Mitchell Pearce, Liam Knight, Tony Unsworth and an unidentified male. The group caught an Uber to the Ivy where the unknown man shook hands with security staff and introduced Carter, who was then directed to an entry line that required no identification to be scanned.

About 1am, Carter was observed by police in a corner of the club speaking on his phone before Kenny-Dowall approached him and was passed .29 of a gram of cocaine.

Detectives were standing approximately 1.5 metres away and arrested Kenny- Dowall, who refused to co-operate other than to say he got the drugs from “a mate”.

Carter was recorded on CCTV leaving the club and called Pearce and Knight. Subsequent police inquiries showed Carter’s phone also contacted Roosters Executive Assistant Cathy Kelly, who the next morning called Roosters CEO Joe Kelly, Roosters Group CEO Scott McDonald, Kenny-Dowall and a sports psychologist, among others.

The Roosters announced on June 7 Carter had been released from his contract. Two days later, Carter left Australia and told a friend he was attending The Cabin in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for rehabilitation.

Kenny-Dowall, who now plays for the Newcastle Knights, was previously spared a conviction after he pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine at the nightclub. He was placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond in June.

A former junior hockey player in Canada convicted of a sex crime will not have to serve his sentence until after he finishes school in the spring, outraging the teen victim’s mother.

Connor Neurauter, 21, was sentenced to 90 days for obtaining nude photos from a 13-year-old girl, but won’t be taken into custody until May, according to the Calgary Sun.

“It’s been two years — all of these court dates extended, extended, extended,” the victim’s mother told the newspaper. “Because of . . . why? ‘Sorry, he’s unavailable for court because he has a hockey tournament. He’s unavailable for court because he has exams. He’s unavailable to come do his plea on his own because he’s in the middle of studying.’

“Let’s postpone his jail sentence until May so he can finish his year of university,” she continued. “Nobody has stood up and said no, during the whole thing — there was not one time where the judge or even the Crown said ‘please, this is not right.’ The victims are the ones who have been paying over and over, every time we went to court.”

Neurauter was originally charged in 2016 with having an inappropriate relationship with the 13-year-old girl, who lived in Kamloops in British Columbia, according to the Sun. It was reported by Kamloops This Week in September of 2016 that Neurauter, 19 at the time, was allowed to have his case delayed so he could remain with his hockey team.

He pleaded guilty last week to sexual interference with a person under 16, but remains free to finish the school term at the University of Calgary, according to the Sun.

“This decision serves to give messages to people that sexual violence is not a serious crime within some segments of the justice system — that the perpetrator’s needs come first and that survivors have little voice within a system that generally already feels quite unsafe for people who experience sexual violence,” Danielle Aubry of Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse told the Sun.

“This decision continues to feed into the reason why Canada has a 6% reporting rate of sexual violence crimes.”

Neurauter is on probation and will be on the sex offender registry for 10 years, according to the newspaper.

Send a Letter to the Editor

Join the Conversation:

facebook

Tweet