[Updated: 11:04 a.m.] Florida coach Jim McElwain said there is nothing new to report on the nine players who are currently under indefinite suspension during an ongoing UPD investigation into possible credit card fraud.
“No,” he said Monday. “I promise you when I know I’ll tell you.”
UPD is only confirming that the investigation is ongoing and there is no timetable for when it will be complete.
“The investigation continues to move along,” UPD spokesman Maj. Brad Barber said Tuesday. “I don’t have a time frame. This investigation takes time, and it’s complicated.”
Once the investigation is concluded, if there are charges, they will be forwarded in a sworn complaint to the State Attorney’s Office, which then would investigate to determine if any formal charges are made. That process could take some time, possibly weeks.
The players being investigated are defensive end Jordan Smith, wide receiver Antonio Callaway, running back Jordan Scarlett, defensive end Keivonnis Davis, defensive tackle Richerd Desir-Jones, offensive tackle Kadeem Telford, linebacker James Houston, wide receiver Rick Well and linebacker Ventrell Miller.
Smith is also being investigated by Gainesville Police for possible credit card fraud in a separate case. GPD spokesman Ben Tobias told The Sun on Tuesday that no other players are involved in its investigation at this time.
Citing unnamed sources, thereadoptional.com reported Monday that all nine players could be arrested by the end of this week. It also is reporting that Callaway, Smith and an unnamed player likely will be arrested on charges of felony grand theft.
There is a possibility that all nine players could be charged with a felony, but that will be determined by what the investigation reveals when it is complete.
All nine players also are being investigated for misuse of university funds. According to thereadoptional.com, restitution has been made in that aspect of the investigation.
Gainesville attorney Huntley Johnson is representing two of the players, but he would not name them and did not want to comment on the case. He has represented Callaway in the past.
Now being reported that Antonio Callaway and Jordan Smith are going to be arrested and charged with felony credit card fraud. I think the end if finally here for Mr. Callaway and his criminal behavior while on the UF campus. About time, I say.
Send him home! If this was King Crab Winston, wouldn’t we be howling for punishment?
Completely agree, if they did what is being reported why would there teammates and coaches ever trust them again? Do the right thing.
I agree that if our players are charged with a felony that they should be removed from the team and their scholarships rescinded. But I do believe that we should wait until the investigation has been completed and the charges filed.
Either way, all of these players should be made an example of and their punishments should be significant. Their idiotic, illegal and selfish behavior has had a hugely negative impact on this team. They all put themselves ahead of the team (if they are in fact guilty) and as such, should be held responsible and their punishments should fit their crimes.
Obviously MAC is recruiting players with little or no character!! Is the biggest scandal for the University of Florida…. EVER. Brings shame on all UF alumni and boosters. Now wonder when the NCAA will get involved and bring down their wrath on UF?
Amber7. The NCAA will not have to get involved because McElwain and Florida did the right thing with these players by suspending them as soon as they were aware of their actions. And I do not recall any of the previously suspended players, other than Robinson (and he is not even one of those being investigated for felony fraud) coming to Florida with questionable character issues or concerns. But troll on, Amber. with nonsense.
You haven’t been around very long, have you? If so I guess you haven’t been paying attention. This isn’t even close to being the worst crime a Gator has committed in the last decade much less ever and it isn’t even the first time one has committed credit card fraud (See: Hornsby, Jamar).
probably the murders that Aaron Hernandez is suspected of but was never charged with are the worst crimes ever committed by a player while here in Gainesville. but there have been rape allegations, stalking, and many other violent crimes that have been documented. please let’s leave the hyperbole alone on this one.
Amber 7 i believe the largest scandal EVER occurred when Charlie Pell was the head coach and we had over 100 NCAA violations. Talk about bringing shame on UF that was it.
he violated me 107 times… an old punch line from the Alligator cartoon called The Institution if anybody remembers that chestnut. i don’t particularly enjoy being one of the guys who keeps longing for the good old days, but if youve seen Lifeless Joey in the Alligator today, you’ll know what i mean when i say i long for the days when alligator cartoons were funny. once upon a time they really were.
Amber7, obviously? What’s obvious is you made grave assumptions and jumped to a conclusion that you wanted in the first place. Mac and staff recruit the players they feel will be best for the team and the school. But when kids get to campus they can do some pretty crazy stuff. That goes for UF and every Div 1 school, save for the USMA, USNA, and USAFA, and even then it’s not completely out of the realm they may do something really dumb.
The suspended players haven’t brought one iota of shame on this alumnus as they do not represent me. I think that they’re suspended while under investigation is admirable on the coaching staff’s part, the UAA, and UF in general. Could they have pretended they didn’t know or something and let them play? I don’t know but I would think it’s possible.
Jim McElwain may have a team struggling on offense, but he also has the rest of the team (non-suspended players) giving their all. He’s doing really great things at UF and it takes more time than most fans at this point are willing to allow. Thankfully they’re not running the show.
Rob: Tell me what conclusion did I want?…….since you read minds! And since they don’t represent you, you must not be an alumus. You’re right you don’t know about a lot of things at UF.
Disgusting to say the least. They are going to be arrested, no doubt about it. If any player is charged with a felony, then give them their walking papers. Need to let Calloway go anyway. He’s a bad egg. I got no idea what makes players do stupid things when they have chance to go on to the next level. STUPID,STUPID, STUPID.
UF should be happy it is just theft. aaron hernandez commited double homicide. celebrate gators, you’re improving !!
Dave Fisher. He committed charged homicides while in the NFL and not while at Florida. And Florida people are never happy about such situations. Sad for the players, their families, and the university in fact. Very sad for all.
actually he was suspected of homicides that occurred while he was here in gainesvlile, but that was never proven or even brought to trial
They will all end up at Auburn
I am not excusing what these players did but let’s put this “felony” crime into perspective, shall we? The Financial Collapse of 2007-2008 was caused by subprime mortgage lending to folks who had no wherewithal to pay the loans back. These loans were pushed by the investment banks on down knowing full well how risky they were but they turned a blind eye because these “pushers” made everyone involved very wealthy, in the order of trillions of dollars. They repackaged these very risky loans into highly leveraged but relatively safe investments backed by the full faith and credit of the United States (i.e. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). They had the perfect scheme to make everyone (borrowers and investors) happy, right? Or so they thought. When the bubble burst, they not only caused the greatest recession since the Great Repression, but the ripple effects spread all over the world harming countless innocent people. The U.S. Government spent trillions of dollars to bail out the investors because many of these institutions were “too big to fail”. Oh by the way, these recipient institutions had the gall to use the bail out money to pay out bonuses to their executives and employees. Yet, not one person involved was ever charged or arrested for a crime in the United States for that scheme likely because of the instigators’ wealth and political connections.
So here we have young adolescents who committed a crime of a few hundred dollars that supposedly has since been repaid. Yet, they will still be charged and arrested for a felony because it was over $500. It will be on their record and follow them for the rest of their lives. They have been suspended from the team for an extended duration which no doubt have set their careers and potential earnings back. Where is the outcry over the inequality of the justice system in this country?
Hey Sly,
I agree with your assessment of the issues regarding the UF players.
And as a general rule, you are correct about the Investment Banks doing what they did in order to make a profit. However, the Investment Banks did not create this issue, it was in fact the Congress, which at the time was controlled by Democrats, specifically Barney Franks should shoulder much of the blame, but there were others who shared significantly in that responsibility.
Here is a link to events that the major news networks eschewed when the Financial Crisis began.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzWrnUezDOU
the deregulation of the subprime mortgage industry did not happen because of a democratic congress. do you really want to make stick with an assertion that democrats favored deregulation, and that the republicans did not?
Joe, the deregulation wasn’t the primary reason why the mortgage industry failed, it was the Democrats insistence on banks loaning money on mortgages to people who (for the most part) had no business becoming homeowners. That is what caused the enormous meltdown, as people who should never have been homeowners stopped paying their mortgages, which made the mortgage backed securities that were sold to investors become relatively worthless. When enough of the mortgages went into foreclosure, the market tanked and property prices went into freefall since there were so many foreclosed homes on the market that were worth pennies on the dollar.
Deregulation allowed incredible growth and broadening of services for financial institutions, but it didn’t cause the housing crisis, which is what led to the Great Recession.
Hold onto your hat as there could well be a similar problem with student loan debt.
Eric, I’m afraid your blind loyalty to a certain political view is preventing you from seeing the truth. You want us to believe that legislation forced banks and investors, who are in the business of making money, to make bad investments? They didn’t have a choice to make rational decisions? The financial conglomerate has successfully used such blind loyalty from both sides of the isle to point fingers at each other rather than at them. Legislation didn’t force investment banks to come up with a scheme using derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps to turn a pile of crap (subprime mortgages) and repackaged them and sold them as gold (AAA rated investments) to institutional investors. The problem was no matter how beautiful they packaged the crap, it was still crap inside they were selling to institutional investors whose charters prevented them from buying crap. Meanwhile, the financial conglomerate were more than happy to take their cut in fees for facilitating the scheme to make both the borrowers (home owners) and investors happy.
You are right though about the student loan debt. It will be the next bubble to pop. The problem isn’t legislation. The problem is greed in the name of capitalism.
Hey Sly, I’m actually a middle of the road Republican. But I was working in the mortgage industry when all of this happened and I have worked in the financial services industry for 30 years now. So I saw this coming, railed against it and was then horrified when my concerns became reality.
Yes, it was Congress’ fault as they created the laws that required banks and other mortgage lenders to loan a certain percentage of their mortgage loan portfolios in certain districts surrounding their branches (anti-redlining).
If YOU owned a “for profit” institution that was then REQUIRED to make loans that you knew a fairly large percentage of would likely go bad; wouldn’t you do all you could to get those loans off of your books? Hence their sale to investors in large pools that contained sufficient “good loans” to be considered diversified.
Congress (which was Democratically controlled at the time) created the anti-redlining laws which required banks and mortgage lenders to loan to people who had no business owning a home.
Somehow or other, we seem to have gotten off track with the original thread of these replies.
Sorry about that, Chief.
“The investigation continues to move along,” Really? Seems more like drag along. How long can it take?
Loved Callaway’s play at Florida, but he’s hand enough second chances and apparently hasn’t learned anything. It is time to part ways and for Callaway to learn his final lesson and that is there is an end to the road, or at least his Gator trail.
Let’s be more positive: Mac can buy some carts and hats, slap some logos on them, and sue the felons tossed off the team to peddle his BBQ sauce door-to-door. Use your resources, I say!
feel like the differentiation between felony and misdemeanor should not be the only consideration in the should they stay or should they go debate. patterns of behavior should be weighed much more heavily, as well as the actual damage done, rather than the legal classification of the crime. with that being said, goodbye mr callaway. have a good time at west virginia or wherever gator cast-offs wind up these days.
Sly,
Two wrongs do not make a right. These are young impressionable kids and a felony is felony. Talk about going way of on a tangent.
Why isn’t this a question of lack of institutional control? Nine players involved in same criminal activity? NCAA should look into this matter as well. Suspending the players will not be sufficient IMHO.