Black Market: my life inside the seedy underbelly of college basketball

When the FBI shocked the college basketball world with its 2017 announcement of charges in a corruption scandal, I was caught in the cross fire.

That morning, I was in bed. It was a Tuesday. September 26. Early, around 6.15am. My wife, Candance, who has a PhD in occupational therapy and was pregnant with my son August at the time, and I had just returned from a surprise trip to Canada for her birthday. She was in the bathroom, getting ready to go to work. I heard somebody knocking at the door. It was still dark outside. Nobody in their right mind would be knocking that early in the morning. I jumped up out of the bed, still half asleep, and rushed downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

Aggravated, clad only in a T-shirt and underwear, I opened the door and was greeted by the shocking sight of close to 20 FBI officers on my porch, lawn, driveway and the adjacent street. About 12 of them were outfitted in tactical gear, assault rifles raised and at the ready, the rest in plainclothes with handguns drawn. You would have thought that I was an international drug lord and murderous fugitive from justice. It was a bizarre scenario that seemed more like a horrific dream.

The lead agent barked, “Are you Merl Code? You’re under arrest!”

“For what?”

“I’ll tell you when you get in a car.”

“Nope. Tell me why I’m under arrest now.”

“No, I’ll tell you when you get in the car.”

“Listen, man, I know enough about the law to know that you have to tell me why I’m under arrest.”

“Money laundering.”

“From whom? What are you talking about?”

The next thing I knew, one of the officers was playing a recording of me talking to Christian Dawkins, a young up-and-coming sports agent that I’d mentored in the past. “That’s not a decision