Sports: Charge: McPherson gambled

College football

Charge: McPherson gambled

Former Seminole Adrian McPherson allegedly placed bets on Florida State to win.

By BRIAN LANDMAN, Times Staff Writer

TALLAHASSEE -- Former Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson was charged Tuesday with gambling thousands of dollars via the Internet on pro and college games, including his team.

McPherson, 19, already faces four felonies and a misdemeanor in two other pending cases, one involving the theft, forgery and cashing of a $3,500 check. The gambling charge is a second-degree misdemeanor.

"I feel badly for Adrian McPherson and his family," FSU coach Bobby Bowden said in a statement. "I just can't imagine what was going through his mind."

More damaging in the long run is the accusation he bet on the Seminoles. Witnesses told police he picked them to win each weekend. If true, he would lose all remaining NCAA eligibility.

"All these guys know about sports agents and gambling," FSU compliance director Bob Minnix said. "We drill it into their heads from the day they get here. All we can do is educate. We can't hold their hands. We can't be with them 24 hours around the clock."

The three-month police investigation also produced six individuals who said McPherson bet on college and pro basketball with a campus bookie, Dereck Delach, since January 2002 and by March 2002 owed him about $8,000.

McPherson's attorney, Grady Irvin, could not be reached for comment.

Delach, 23, a former FSU student, has denied McPherson owed him money. He could not be reached at his parents' home in Pennsylvania. But former baseball player Mike Futrell, who lived with Delach last fall, told police Delach burned his betting records shortly after McPherson's arrest on the stolen check in November.

Delach and Jeffrey Inderhees, 21, who until recently was an FSU student football equipment manager, were charged with one felony count of bookmaking.

"Unless someone comes up with something we haven't heard before, this is all we're going to get that we can prove," FSU chief of police Carey Drayton said. "But there are stories out there."

Rumors of a widespread problem have run rampant throughout the investigation by the campus police, the Tallahassee Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. New FSU president T.K. Wetherell said this might not be the end, but a beginning.

"When those bookies start talking, assuming they do, who knows where this will go?" he said.

But athletic department officials have maintained their confidence, even while investigators interviewed football and baseball players, that the scope of any gambling problem would be limited.

"I said in December that I would be shocked if any other of our players were involved, and I was correct despite others' assumptions," Bowden said.

FSU seems unlikely to be sanctioned by the NCAA. It would take a finding of lack of institutional control for that to occur. FSU has developed a campus-wide educational program the NCAA calls a "model." FSU finished its second annual gambling symposium Tuesday morning.

"Despite the prioritization, effort and resources we have put into educating our student-athletes and general student body about the dangers and ramifications of gambling, we fully understand that no university is immune to this problem," athletic director Dave Hart said in a statement. "It's very real, and it can happen anywhere."

Hart added a silver lining could be that this case might "heighten attention and awareness" on campus. Wetherell also has hired a consultant to look at the athletic department and determine how problems such as this can be avoided.

Minnix, who worked at the NCAA in enforcement before coming to Tallahassee, has kept in "constant contact" with the NCAA throughout the matter.

That began early last summer, when Minnix said he had an anonymous tip about McPherson's gambling. According to the probable-cause affidavit, Inderhees was the source.

Reached at his Tallahassee home, Inderhees, a senior no longer affiliated with the team, declined comment until he could speak to his father and his father's attorney. Inderhees, a first-time offender, according to FDLE records, turned himself in Tuesday and was released without bail.

FSU officials investigated the allegations last summer but could not substantiate them.

"We don't have the power of subpoena," Hart said. "We can't put people under oath." McPherson was dismissed from the team Nov. 25 as word spread that police were looking at him in connection with the theft, forgery and cashing of a $3,500 check from R&R Truck and Auto Accessories. Police arrested him Nov. 27 and charged him with felony grand theft and misdemeanor theft.

Why he would steal a blank check, forge it (something a handwriting analysis later indicated) and what he needed money for reignited the gambling speculation.

At the urging of then-FSU president Sandy D'Alemberte, Drayton formed a task force in early December. "We're incredibly concerned about it because the very characteristics of our athletes that make them great athletes are the same characteristics that put them at risk to be gamblers," Bill Saum, the NCAA's director of agent, amateurism and gambling activities, recently said, "such things as having great self-confidence, thinking they know more about their sport than anybody else. They're aggressive." Melvin Capers, Jr., a longtime friend and former Bradenton Southeast teammate of McPherson's who was arrested for cashing the $3,500 check, told police in January he and McPherson had set up an account to gamble on the Internet. According to the probable cause affidavit, Capers said McPherson insisted the account and wire transfers be in Capers' name so McPherson "would not get in trouble with the NCAA."

Capers' roommate, Otis Livingston, also allegedly set up an account, and Livingston told police the three placed small bets two or three times a week on college and pro football games but "the bets McPherson was placing soon escalated to between $500 and $1,000." Livingston also said McPherson bet on FSU to win each week during 2002.

Police seized a laptop computer belonging to Livingston's sister, Western Union records of money transfers and McPherson's cellular phone records that show four calls to the gambling site during the days leading up to what turned out to be his final game against North Carolina State.

Prosecutors have not charged Capers in the check case and probably won't. The $3,500 is still unaccounted for, police said, and they are not sure if that money is connected to gambling.

During the summer and fall, McPherson bounced 37 checks, five written for cash for $76 at two local Publix stores during a four-day period in early August. Prosecutors charged him with a felony in that case. Bank records from that case, which showed a four-figure withdrawal in September, might have played a part in the gambling probe.

"We let the investigation take us where the facts led," Drayton said. "The (task force) did an excellent job of following up every story, rumor or accusation from any source provided to them."

-- Times staff writer Lucy Morgan contributed to this report.