DaytonDailyNews.com

Before the alleged threats, the 48-year-old Brookneal, Va., businessman knew the plan had backfired when the players called collect from Russia pleading for help, saying they weren't allowed to leave.

The plan was to send four basketball players — all of them at least 6-foot-10-inches tall — from Nigeria to Russia, where they’d stay a couple weeks and obtain visas to enter the United States. Once they were in America, they would play on Boggs’ Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball team, where the exposure could help them attract scholarships at prominent universities.

Everyone involved hoped to benefit somehow.

"In hindsight, I probably should have had my head examined," Boggs said. "You hear these kids on the phone crying in an unabashed or unashamed manner because they were scared for their lives."

One of the players, Olumide Oyedeji, said he was desperate in Russia.

"Patric, you have to get me out of here or I’m going to kill myself," the 6-foot-10-inch Oyedeji recalled telling Boggs. Oyedeji is now playing for the Seattle SuperSonics in the NBA.

Ever since Nigerian-born Hakeem Olajuwon emerged as one of the NBA’s top players, the pipeline from Africa to the United States has been clogged with international scouts, agents and coaches seeking players from the heart of Africa.

But Nigerians, like others attempting to come to the United States on student visas, must meet several criteria, including proof that they have family or financial ties in their home country.

"You have to show more of a reason to come back (to Nigeria) than to stay in the United States," said Christopher Lamora, spokesman for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.

Lamora said there’s a myth that getting out of Nigeria is difficult. Approximately 58 percent of the Nigerians’ requests for visas to the United States — or 20,908 — were approved in fiscal 1997. But the lines outside embassies are long and there are no guarantees a consulate official will believe an African's stated intention to return home, particularly if he is 7 feet tall.

So Boggs and his partners came up with a solution: Go to Russia first.

The story recounted by the four Nigerian players and Boggs — that after making the 3,800-mile trip to Moscow, they were forced to sign contracts with a professional team and threatened by members of the Russian mafia — is much in dispute.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association declared one of the players, Muhammed Lasege, ineligible to play basketball at Louisville University last fall — a decision that was later overturned. The NCAA, calling the Lasege case "egregious," raised questions about the player's claims of being coerced into signing two contracts with Russian teams.

But although some of the facts are disputed, it appears the players didn't know what to expect in Russia and soon found themselves surrounded by agents and middlemen planning their professional careers.

Oyedeji, who was 16 when he first arrived in Moscow, said the Russians had no intention of sending him to the United States.

"They were trying to sell me to a couple teams and make a lot of money out of it," he said.

Boggs, president of a communications company that employs 80 people, said his role in the Russia plan was to introduce Nigerian coach Toyin Sonoiki and Russian scout Boris Karebin, and later place the players in high schools in the United States.

Boggs knew Karebin because the Russian's son played on Boggs' AAU team. AAU provides amateur competition for high school players, some coming as far away as Iceland and France to play on teams such as Boggs' Virginia Select Basketball Club.

Boggs said he played no part in any of the players signing professional contracts, but that Sonoiki and Karebin hoped to make a profit.

"These guys were looking basically to sell flesh," he said.

Karebin, currently an assistant coach for the Ukrainian National Team, said he didn’t make any money in the deal. He said the owners of two professional teams in Russia invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the players after Boggs misrepresented their talent, saying they "were the best in the world."

It’s unknown if Sonoiki or anyone else ever received money in exchange for helping the Nigerian players. Sonoiki couldn’t be reached for comment.

All the Nigerians eventually made it to the United States, but a handful of Cameroon basketball players who went through the same pipeline to Russia had a different outcome. Some returned home, giving up on their hope of playing basketball for American schools, said Bernard Tchoula, a Cameroon native who helped the players leave their country.

One player was so depressed the Russians sent him back to Cameroon, where he was hospitalized temporarily, said Tchoula, who now lives in Indianapolis. Another is still playing for a Russian team and a third player is on a professional Lithuanian team.

"The kids in Africa are so destitute that anything you offer them, they jump to get the opportunity," he said.

NIGERIA TO RUSSIA TO CANADA TO U.S.
In Lagos, a city of 10 million people, it’s easy to be anonymous. But when you are 6 feet 11 inches tall, like Lasege, basketball coaches take notice.

At 15, Lasege started playing basketball for the first time — initially with his high school team and later on a club team called the Ebun Comets.

Lasege told the University of Louisville that none of the Comets received compensation, but Comets coach and part-owner Ayo Bakare told the Dayton Daily News some are given an allowance.

The NCAA prohibits players who competed on professional teams, regardless of whether they have been paid, from participating in college athletics.

While playing for the Comets in 1997, Lasege met Sonoiki, the coach and owner of the Lagos Islanders Nigerian professional team.

Sonoiki, an attorney, told Lasege and his mother about the plan he and Boggs had concocted, and within weeks Lasege had left his homeland with a bag of shirts, two pairs of jeans and $50 his mother gave him, Lasege later told NCAA officials.

Oyedeji said New Sport, a Moscow sports agency, paid for their plane tickets — another NCAA violation.

After arriving in Moscow in October 1997, Oyedeji said he and Lasege met Karebin, a former Minnesota Timberwolves scout, and representatives of New Sport. The New Sport representatives confiscated the players' passports, he said.

"My parents trusted them. I wanted to go because I wanted an education in the United States," said Oyedeji. "They make you scared. You got no family to talk to. What would you do?"

If they weren’t practicing or playing, they were hanging out in a small apartment or motel, Oyedeji said. None of the Nigerians attended school in Russia, he said.

Lasege would later tell a harrowing tale to NCAA officials. The players periodically didn’t have access to phones and were often threatened by "mafia" and armed guards, he said.

Karebin, 46, during a phone interview from Belgium, described a different string of events . He doesn't believe anybody was threatened, and said the Nigerians knew a short time after they arrived that the Russian sports officials wanted them to stay and play professionally.

Karebin said Nicholai Zimming, an owner of the Moscow Dynamo professional basketball team, lost $400,000 on the four Nigerians. Zimming provided a cook, a driver and housing for the players. Karebin also maintains the players were paid a small amount of money.

He acknowledged that Zimming was searching for professional players.

"If they could be as good as let’s say Shaquille O’Neal immediately, just come on the market, you can imagine that’s a good move for company and team," Karebin said.

But the Russians soon realized the Nigerians weren't the "Shaquille O'Neals" promised by Boggs, Karebin said. At that point, Zimming and the agency he works for, New Sport, decided to send the players to the United States, but the players lacked high school transcripts and were unable to get visas, Karebin said.

"They came and acted as professional players over there," he said of the Nigerian players. "They like to get money and get paid and then play ball, but meanwhile they still like to go to the U.S. If you are amateur athlete then you shouldn’t ask for money."

On Oct. 29, 1997, Lasege signed a $9,000 three-year contract with incentives based on his athletic performance and began playing with the Moscow Dynamo junior team. The players — three of whom signed contracts — told NCAA investigators they were never paid.

The other two Nigerians, Benjamin Eze and Uche Okafor, arrived in Russia in January 1998.

Eze told a University of Louisville compliance officer investigating Lasege that he signed a $400,000 professional basketball contract. Okafor told the NCAA he never signed a contract.

Lasege signed a second contract, on June 1, 1998, with the professional team, Saratov Autodor. Lasege told the NCAA that in exchange for signing the contract, Zimming paid for him and Oyedeji to fly to Lagos and visit their families.

Efforts to reach Lasege through his attorney in Louisville were unsuccessful.

Instead of returning to Russia, Oyedeji went to Germany, where he finished high school and played for DJK Wurzburg, a professional team. He hasn’t been back to Russia.

Lasege told NCAA investigators that he reluctantly returned to Russia six weeks after visiting Lagos because his family was being harassed.

"If (they) had a bad time then why did they come back?" Karebin asked. "Why wouldn’t they stay in Nigeria? Why wouldn’t they try to fly somewhere else? No. They came back to Moscow."

While the players have told NCAA investigators and universities they were trapped in Russia, Karebin said they had several opportunities to leave.

What happened next is outlined in a University of Louisville compliance officer's report to the NCAA. Sonoiki, the same man who sent the players to Russia, got them visas to Canada.

On Dec. 27, 1998, 14 months after Lasege left Nigeria for Russia, he arrived in Toronto with Okafor, and stayed with Slavko Duric, a friend of Sonoiki's. Eze left at approximately the same time to Italy, and later joined the two Nigerians in Toronto. The three players eventually moved into the home of Donovan Brown, another friend of Sonoiki's.

Brown and Duric paid for all of their expenses including Lasege’s trips to UCLA and University of Louisville in the spring, Lasege told NCAA officials.

In May 1999, Clyde Drexler, then coach at the University of Houston, asked Olajuwon, a former college and professional teammate, to talk to Lasege about playing basketball at the school, according to the NCAA.

Lasege toured the university campus, stayed at Olajuwon's house and attended a Houston Rockets game.

NCAA investigators would later rule that Lasege's contacts with Olajuwon violated the association's rules on preferential treatment.

Olajuwon told the Dayton Daily News he was just trying to help a countryman.

"When I came I didn’t have anybody to help me along," Olajuwon said. "As a brother I advised them to pick a college for exposure because ultimately the goal is for them to play in the NBA. I’m not recruiting . . . I don’t care about the NCAA. I play for the NBA."

But Lasege didn't like the Houston campus and decided to attend the University of Louisville, where the school and Lasege would mount a nearly two-year battle with the NCAA over his eligibility. Although Lasege won a court ruling last December and was allowed to play this year — making his debut against the University of Dayton — the NCAA has appealed the case to the Kentucky Supreme Court, where it is pending.

Eze, the other player who signed a contract in Russia, also signed a letter of intent to attend the University of Louisville, but he was ruled academically ineligible.

Eze and Okafor opted for a junior college, the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, Idaho, and averaged a combined 16.5 points and 12.3 rebounds a game this year.

"Both were a little raw in their exact understanding of the game," said Southern Idaho Coach Derek Zeck.

MUHAMMED LASEGE VS. NCAA
After Lasege enrolled at Louisville, the school conducted an investigation into the contracts he signed in Russia, concluding he was threatened and coerced.

But the NCAA ruled that Lasege violated college athletic rules, including signing professional contracts with a sports agency and professional team and receiving preferential treatment.

After being ruled ineligible to participate at the University of Louisville in November, Lasege sued the NCAA on Dec. 4.

One of the witnesses who testified during the daylong hearing on Dec. 20, was Lasege, who said he had no intention of becoming a professional basketball player in Russia.

Lasege told the judge he didn’t know the NCAA rules.

In a decision that shocked NCAA officials, a Jefferson County (Kentucky) Circuit Court judge ruled that the NCAA decision to bench Lasege was "arbitrary and capricious," and he was allowed to suit up.

The NCAA filed its appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court Feb. 13.

In its appeal to the Kentucky Supreme Court, the NCAA stated:

"Allowing Lasege to compete when he has not met the amateurism qualifications undermines the NCAA ability to enforce the competition standards."