Coaches Who Invested In David Salinas Meeting In Las Vegas

The coaches who were hoodwinked by David Salinas — some for hundreds of thousands of dollars — met with lawyers in Las Vegas Sunday at 1 p.m. PT to discuss how to go about getting back the money they lost. Per Andy Katz:

According to sources, the purpose of the meeting is to centralize the coaches’ issues in an attempt to make their case for the return of money lost through the Salinas’ alleged scheme. The meeting will also address coaches’ concerns about any perceived NCAA issues that have arisen during the course of the public disclosure of the scheme.

A group of the coaches who lost money with Salinas told ESPN.com over the past week that they never looked to get players from Salinas’ Houston Select AAU team in exchange for investing with him. But they also said they understand how that perception was created since he was an AAU program owner. A few coaches said in hindsight it wasn’t the best idea to invest with him based on the perception. Still, they are adamant that their issues are only dealing with lost bond funds and nothing else.

Salinas was under investigation for organizing a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme in which he bilked millions from dollars for college basketball and football coaches. He committed suicide a week ago in his home.

In all likelihood, none of the coaches or schools that employed will be sanctioned in the aftermath of the scandal, but in the court of public opinion, they look pretty guilty. They invested a ton of money with a guy who had the ear of a number of college basketball prospects over the past couple decades. This meeting will be a gameplan on how to deal with the skepticism to some extent.

More importantly to the coaches involved, though, the lawyers will try to formulate the best course of action for getting the money back. No word on if the Wilpons had anything to do with this.