NCAA FootballPolice Blotter

Hall-Of-Fame Coach Jim Donnan Scammed His Own Players In An $80 Million Ponzi Scheme

Jim Donnan is an asshat. The SEC — the Securities and Exchange Commission, not the conference he coached Georgia in — has charged him for conducting an $80 million Ponzi scheme with a fellow asshat. He scammed former players of his, and he got two of his children and son-in-law involved.

Donnan and [the other dude] Crabtree “promised investors exorbitant rates of return ranging from 50 to 380 percent,” Nestor said. “However, only about $12 million of the $80 million raised from nearly 100 investors was actually used to purchase leftover merchandise, and the remaining funds were used to pay fake returns to earlier investors or stolen for other uses by Donnan and Crabtree.”

That’s a Ponzi scheme, all right!

According to the complaint, filed in federal court in Atlanta, the scheme began in August, 2007, and collapsed in October, 2010.

Nestor said that Donnan recruited the majority of investors by approaching contacts he made as a coach and sports commentator.

A coach at a prominent football university used his power and influence to victimize others. Shocking.

He also scammed other (unnamed) college coaches, and told other investors about the coaches’ supposed profits to draw them in.

One former Georgia and NFL player, Kendrell Bell, said last year that Donnan had bilked more than $2 million out of him in the scheme.

Yup.

The whole SEC court document is here; read it if you like being bored and pissed off. But for our purposes, this is most important.

In some instances involving former players, Donnan used his influence to convince them to invest. For example, when approaching a former player that Donnan had coached, Donnan told him “Your Daddy is going to take care of you” and “if you weren’t my son, I wouldn’t be doing this for you.” That player later invested $800,000.

I can’t even begin to describe the degree of scum exhibited here. A person that can say and do this is satanic.

In fact, Johnson took money from his football player “sons,” as part of a scheme that awarded his real son and daughter with “regular streams of payments for a substantial duration of the fraud, resulting in unjust enrichment.” Oh, I take it back. He’s a family man!

Jim Donnan is not an asshat. Jim Donnan is a scumbag asshole, adorned with an asshat.

[AJC]

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