Coach Ryan Wolf: Fraud On The Way To The NBA

You probably haven't heard of Coach Ryan Wolf. He's a college level coach out of Wichita, Kansas, who coached at County Community College. County Community is a stepping stone for budding NCAA and NBA players who can't go directly to a four year school. Starting off at community colleges is not uncommon in the NBA, and many big name players have done it.  Community college makes a career in the workforce or the NBA possible.

So what did Ryan Wolf do in his coaching career to earn him a spot on our NBA thugs list?  He got arrested for fraud.  It seems he had quite the racket going for pre-NBA stars who came through his school, including NBA basket baller Ricky Clemons. Coach Wolf was offering financial rewards to his amateur athletes to get them signed on to his team and then the NBA. He was also giving kids false passing grades and fake academic credentials to players so that they would qualify for the NBA and NCAA.

The arrest brought 36 individual charges of fraud against Coach Wolf.  He had even been supplying other colleges and community colleges false records on players to facilitate transfers that would not normally have been approved.  The official indictment covers the years of 1998 through 2003. During that time he also got grants for students that didn't really qualify for them and that did not use the grant money for its intended purpose, and assigned some students to campus jobs so they could draw a paycheck, then did not make them go to work.

All of the fraud on an academic and college financial level would be bad enough, but Coach Wolf even defrauded the United States Government, forging player signatures on Pell Grant checks.  The local authorities did not prosecute any of the students for any of the 36 counts of fraud, as it seemed evident Coach Wolf was working the scam entirely on his own. It is not clear how he explained the funding to the students.

Ricky Clemons got in trouble on his own for assault and imprisonment while he was at Missouri, but he was never tied to the fraud charges against Coach Wolf.   Other athletes that were on the receiving end of Wolf's scam included Randy Pulley, Jason Carter, Carlton Baker and Eric Washington, among others.  The total fraud amount Coach Wold was being charged with was over $120,000 (possibly more). Eventually, enough evidence came to light that the charged were changed to embezzlement, theft and mail fraud. Wolf plead guilty to all counts and could have faced as much as 45 years in prison.