Dispatch
2/12
Booster’s gaming ties get him on OSU’s ‘list’
Athletes told to avoid contact with 25 people
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Kathy Lynn Gray and Jim Woods
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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Ohio State University has warned its athletes to stay away from a Columbus businessman with a Web site tied to gambling.
The businessman, Bernie Fernandez Jr., is under scrutiny in a gambling investigation by the Franklin County sheriff’s office.
Heather Lyke Catalano, OSU’s compliance officer, told a sheriff’s investigator in an April 2004 e-mail that she was worried about Fernandez because "we have student athletes working for Bernie and need to cease that relationship."
She has since placed Fernandez on a "watch list" of people student athletes should avoid.
Fernandez operates www.Pokertopia.com, a Web site that allows users to click on sites that offer Internet gambling. As such, Fernandez said, he’s simply a conduit to gambling sites, not someone who takes bets himself.
"I am not a bookie," Fernandez said. "I have nothing to hide."
The university became concerned about Fernandez in 2002 when Lyke learned that he had befriended Troy Smith, then a freshman football player.
Smith, now the starting quarterback, said he met Fernandez through his brother Rod Smith, an offensive lineman at Ohio State in the early 1990s.
Fernandez said he met Rod Smith at a golf outing.
After learning that Troy Smith needed a job, Fernandez hired him to deliver fliers in Worthington advertising www.15 minutesoffame.org., a Web site he was developing. Smith said he was paid $200 to $300 for the 2002 summer job. Fernandez said Smith was the only player he hired.
Ohio State nixed the job after a few days, however, when Lyke learned that Fernandez operated www.Pokertopia.com.
"Gambling is something we have concerns about," said Lyke, an associate athletics director. "Bernie understood that the student athletes couldn’t work for him."
Smith kept in contact with Fernandez and left him two tickets for the home football game against North Carolina State in 2003. But Smith said he distanced himself after Lyke pulled him aside in 2003 and told him to break it off.
"I was told he might be involved in gambling," Smith said.
OSU Athletics Director Gene Smith says that Troy’s early association with Fernandez was simply that: an association.
"I’m concerned that people would draw the conclusion that he was involved with gambling, and I have found nothing like that," Gene Smith said Friday.
"He has not had any involvement with gambling. None."
While there is no evidence of a problem with Fernandez, the quarterback was in trouble last season.
He was suspended for two games after the NCAA found that he had accepted $500 from Springfield businessman and OSU booster Robert Q. Baker in 2004.
But since then, Gene Smith said, the star quarterback has walked the straight and narrow.
Fernandez’s relationship with OSU football might have stayed below the public radar had it not been for former men’s basketball coach Jim O’Brien, who sued the university after being fired in June 2004. During depositions for the trial, Fernandez’s name surfaced.
In her deposition, Lyke said she knew who Fernandez was but couldn’t recall whether she’d been told in an e-mail from former OSU football great Archie Griffin that Fernandez was a bookmaker.
Griffin, now head of the OSU Alumni Association, said Friday that he told Lyke in an e-mail that he had heard Fernandez might be a bookmaker.
"I wanted to make compliance aware of that," he said. "I can’t confirm that he was a bookie; I was just passing along information."
Fernandez, 44, has been in the cell-phone business, designed Web sites and started a number of Internet sites.
He became acquainted with former OSU athletes during the late 1990s through his business, offering discount deals for cellphone users. He also briefly had a business in which people could pay a fee and talk with ex-OSU football stars via video hookup over the Internet.
Fernandez helped the Columbus Downtown Quarterback Club with its Web site. He appears in a photograph on that site, with Griffin and Pete Johnson, a star fullback in the ’70s.
Johnson said he’s never known Fernandez to be involved in gambling. Fernandez is a regular at Johnson’s tailgate parties outside Ohio Stadium on football Saturdays.
"He knows a lot of players," Johnson said. "He’s a Buckeye."
With each business he operated, Fernandez said he befriended more influential people.
"Columbus is an easy town to network in," Fernandez said.
But Fernandez wishes he never met David Cahall. Fernandez blames his present troubles on that friendship and an investment that went wrong.
Cahall had an office next to Fernandez’s at a Westerville-area building. Cahall said he sold large shipments of clothing to T.J. Maxx and Marshalls and promised quick returns of 20 percent to 30 percent to investors who helped finance the deals.
Fernandez said he sank $200,000 of his money and lined up an additional $500,000 from other investors.
Cahall has begun serving a five-year sentence for duping investors out of at least $1.8 million. As a condition of his sentence, Cahall made statements to authorities.
After Cahall’s arrest, Fernandez said, his bank accounts were frozen as part of the Westerville police investigation.
Fernandez also thinks Franklin County deputy sheriffs searched his Far North Side house because of Cahall.
Although the search warrant is sealed, Fernandez said deputies were looking for gambling paraphernalia and seized computers, business files, credit cards, a cell phone and cash.
Fernandez said he is being wrongly accused and is confident he will be cleared.
"I am not concerned," Fernandez said. "One thing I have learned about the justice system is they treat you like you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent."
Cpl. Dave Hunt, of the sheriff’s office, confirmed that there is an investigation of Fernandez but said he cannot comment.
E-mail records The Dispatch obtained from Ohio State show that Lyke consulted Hunt about Fernandez in 2004.
In May 2004, Hunt provided Lyke with Fernandez’s address, Social Security number and date of birth. Lyke asked for follow-up information about Fernandez.
NCAA rules don’t prohibit student athletes from playing poker, but Lyke said OSU coaches discourage any kind of gambling by their players.
Online gambling, particularly, can be "really dangerous" for students, Lyke said, because they can become addicted and end up owing a lot of money.
OSU football coach Jim Tressel said he didn’t know about the conversation between Lyke and Troy Smith.
Tressel learned about Fernandez last spring when the businessman was included on a list of about 25 people that players should beware of.
The list also is consulted when players leave tickets.
Tressel said players are advised to be careful when people outside the program seek inside information. Players also go through education programs about the dangers of addiction to gambling, he said.
"I don’t have a concrete rule about gambling," Tressel said, noting he doesn’t prohibit his athletes from playing cards.
"We tell all of our kids that this is a tough place to play. People watch who you are and what you do."
[email protected]
[email protected]
2/12
Booster’s gaming ties get him on OSU’s ‘list’
Athletes told to avoid contact with 25 people
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Kathy Lynn Gray and Jim Woods
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
<!--PHOTOS--> <table class="phototableright" align="right" border="0"> <!-- begin large ad code --> <tbody><tr><td> <table align="center"> <tbody><tr><td align="center">
Ohio State University has warned its athletes to stay away from a Columbus businessman with a Web site tied to gambling.
The businessman, Bernie Fernandez Jr., is under scrutiny in a gambling investigation by the Franklin County sheriff’s office.
Heather Lyke Catalano, OSU’s compliance officer, told a sheriff’s investigator in an April 2004 e-mail that she was worried about Fernandez because "we have student athletes working for Bernie and need to cease that relationship."
She has since placed Fernandez on a "watch list" of people student athletes should avoid.
Fernandez operates www.Pokertopia.com, a Web site that allows users to click on sites that offer Internet gambling. As such, Fernandez said, he’s simply a conduit to gambling sites, not someone who takes bets himself.
"I am not a bookie," Fernandez said. "I have nothing to hide."
The university became concerned about Fernandez in 2002 when Lyke learned that he had befriended Troy Smith, then a freshman football player.
Smith, now the starting quarterback, said he met Fernandez through his brother Rod Smith, an offensive lineman at Ohio State in the early 1990s.
Fernandez said he met Rod Smith at a golf outing.
After learning that Troy Smith needed a job, Fernandez hired him to deliver fliers in Worthington advertising www.15 minutesoffame.org., a Web site he was developing. Smith said he was paid $200 to $300 for the 2002 summer job. Fernandez said Smith was the only player he hired.
Ohio State nixed the job after a few days, however, when Lyke learned that Fernandez operated www.Pokertopia.com.
"Gambling is something we have concerns about," said Lyke, an associate athletics director. "Bernie understood that the student athletes couldn’t work for him."
Smith kept in contact with Fernandez and left him two tickets for the home football game against North Carolina State in 2003. But Smith said he distanced himself after Lyke pulled him aside in 2003 and told him to break it off.
"I was told he might be involved in gambling," Smith said.
OSU Athletics Director Gene Smith says that Troy’s early association with Fernandez was simply that: an association.
"I’m concerned that people would draw the conclusion that he was involved with gambling, and I have found nothing like that," Gene Smith said Friday.
"He has not had any involvement with gambling. None."
While there is no evidence of a problem with Fernandez, the quarterback was in trouble last season.
He was suspended for two games after the NCAA found that he had accepted $500 from Springfield businessman and OSU booster Robert Q. Baker in 2004.
But since then, Gene Smith said, the star quarterback has walked the straight and narrow.
Fernandez’s relationship with OSU football might have stayed below the public radar had it not been for former men’s basketball coach Jim O’Brien, who sued the university after being fired in June 2004. During depositions for the trial, Fernandez’s name surfaced.
In her deposition, Lyke said she knew who Fernandez was but couldn’t recall whether she’d been told in an e-mail from former OSU football great Archie Griffin that Fernandez was a bookmaker.
Griffin, now head of the OSU Alumni Association, said Friday that he told Lyke in an e-mail that he had heard Fernandez might be a bookmaker.
"I wanted to make compliance aware of that," he said. "I can’t confirm that he was a bookie; I was just passing along information."
Fernandez, 44, has been in the cell-phone business, designed Web sites and started a number of Internet sites.
He became acquainted with former OSU athletes during the late 1990s through his business, offering discount deals for cellphone users. He also briefly had a business in which people could pay a fee and talk with ex-OSU football stars via video hookup over the Internet.
Fernandez helped the Columbus Downtown Quarterback Club with its Web site. He appears in a photograph on that site, with Griffin and Pete Johnson, a star fullback in the ’70s.
Johnson said he’s never known Fernandez to be involved in gambling. Fernandez is a regular at Johnson’s tailgate parties outside Ohio Stadium on football Saturdays.
"He knows a lot of players," Johnson said. "He’s a Buckeye."
With each business he operated, Fernandez said he befriended more influential people.
"Columbus is an easy town to network in," Fernandez said.
But Fernandez wishes he never met David Cahall. Fernandez blames his present troubles on that friendship and an investment that went wrong.
Cahall had an office next to Fernandez’s at a Westerville-area building. Cahall said he sold large shipments of clothing to T.J. Maxx and Marshalls and promised quick returns of 20 percent to 30 percent to investors who helped finance the deals.
Fernandez said he sank $200,000 of his money and lined up an additional $500,000 from other investors.
Cahall has begun serving a five-year sentence for duping investors out of at least $1.8 million. As a condition of his sentence, Cahall made statements to authorities.
After Cahall’s arrest, Fernandez said, his bank accounts were frozen as part of the Westerville police investigation.
Fernandez also thinks Franklin County deputy sheriffs searched his Far North Side house because of Cahall.
Although the search warrant is sealed, Fernandez said deputies were looking for gambling paraphernalia and seized computers, business files, credit cards, a cell phone and cash.
Fernandez said he is being wrongly accused and is confident he will be cleared.
"I am not concerned," Fernandez said. "One thing I have learned about the justice system is they treat you like you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent."
Cpl. Dave Hunt, of the sheriff’s office, confirmed that there is an investigation of Fernandez but said he cannot comment.
E-mail records The Dispatch obtained from Ohio State show that Lyke consulted Hunt about Fernandez in 2004.
In May 2004, Hunt provided Lyke with Fernandez’s address, Social Security number and date of birth. Lyke asked for follow-up information about Fernandez.
NCAA rules don’t prohibit student athletes from playing poker, but Lyke said OSU coaches discourage any kind of gambling by their players.
Online gambling, particularly, can be "really dangerous" for students, Lyke said, because they can become addicted and end up owing a lot of money.
OSU football coach Jim Tressel said he didn’t know about the conversation between Lyke and Troy Smith.
Tressel learned about Fernandez last spring when the businessman was included on a list of about 25 people that players should beware of.
The list also is consulted when players leave tickets.
Tressel said players are advised to be careful when people outside the program seek inside information. Players also go through education programs about the dangers of addiction to gambling, he said.
"I don’t have a concrete rule about gambling," Tressel said, noting he doesn’t prohibit his athletes from playing cards.
"We tell all of our kids that this is a tough place to play. People watch who you are and what you do."
[email protected]
[email protected]
