Former Athletics Tutor No Longer Facing Charges

Posted on Oct. 2, 2014

The Orange County district attorney has dropped charges against Jennifer Wiley Thompson ’09, who was one of the first figures to surface in investigations of the relationship between academics and athletics at UNC that started four years ago.

District Attorney James Woodall ’82 (AB, ’85 JD) said that Thompson had been interviewed by Kenneth Wainstein, the independent counsel now engaged in what the University hopes will be the decisive probe of the issues, and that she also has answered questions related to an investigation into the activities of sports agents by the N.C. Secretary of State’s office.

Thompson, a former tutor in UNC’s academic support center for athletes, was charged in late 2013 with four counts of violating a state law governing contact with sports agents. The charges were low-level felonies.

Woodall said of the decision to drop the charges: “For me this is the kind of thing we do with some regularity — somebody who’s charged, they become a cooperative witness.”

Thompson becomes at least the third previously uncooperative witness to respond to Wainstein. Woodall dropped charges of taking compensation under false pretenses against Julius Nyang’oro, who chaired the former Department of African and Afro-American Studies that is at the center of the issues, after Nyang’oro agreed to cooperate with the probe. Anticipated charges against Deborah Crowder ’75, Nyang’oro’s assistant, were not filed after she agreed to cooperate.

“After looking at the facts and sitting down with Ms. Thompson, Mr. Woodall determined that the cases against her should be dismissed,” Joseph B. Cheshire V ’70, an attorney who represented Thompson, said in a statement. “Ms. Thompson committed no crime at any time, and we commend Mr. Woodall for doing the right thing and dismissing these cases. Ms. Thompson has suffered too much over the last four years and hopefully can now begin to put all of this behind her.”

Prosecutors said Thompson provided former UNC football player Greg Little ’12 with two $579 roundtrip plane tickets to Florida, in part to persuade him to enter a contract with a sports agent. The indictments charge that Thompson delivered packages containing money to Little. Hers was the first of five arrests connected to the investigation by the Secretary of State’s office into allegations of athletes receiving improper benefits.

In September, nearly three years after Little was suspended from the team as Carolina’s now long-running investigations into its football program began, Little told investigators with the Secretary of State’s office that he received more money from a sports agent than previously reported and that Thompson was a go-between with the agent.

In October 2010, Little, then a member of the UNC team, was declared ineligible by UNC for violations of NCAA agent benefits, preferential treatment and ethical conduct rules. According to the facts submitted by the University, the total value of the benefits for Little was estimated at $4,952.

In the documents unsealed in September, Little reportedly had told state investigators in January that he received multiple payments over many months totaling more than $20,000 from a sports agent in 2010. Little said that payments were sent from the sports agent to Thompson and that Thompson then forwarded them to him, according to media reports.

Little was one of 11 players who received varying penalties stemming from disclosures in 2010 that began with reports of improper player contacts with sports agents and other outsiders and evolved into allegations of academic misconduct.

In July 2010, the University discovered information that suggested Thompson had provided impermissible help in the form of free tutoring services to several players. UNC says it told Thompson she should not tutor or provide benefits of any type to any athlete. Thompson, it says, did not follow those instructions.

That led to a widening of an investigation of Thompson’s conduct to include sports other than football. Thompson edited papers for the athletes, UNC said, correcting spelling and grammar mistakes and adding sentences. In November, the University sent Thompson a letter of disassociation.

Three of the NCAA’s allegations against Carolina, disclosed in the summer of 2011, involved Thompson, who also had been hired by former head coach Butch Davis as a tutor for his son. Thompson was accused of providing extra benefits to players in the form of expenses for travel and parking and for tutoring; committing academic fraud; and refusing to provide information to the NCAA and to UNC.

Wainstein’s report is expected sometime this fall.

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More online…

• Criminal Charge Against Nyang’oro Dropped
  July 2014 news report
• NCAA Reopening 2011 Inquiry Into Academic Irregularities
  June 2014 news report
• Wainstein Hopes Probe to Be Complete by Fall
  June 2014 news report
• Athletics-Academics Issues Detailed on New UNC Website
  April 2014 news report
• The Long and Grinding Road Continues: To a University trying to move forward and to its constituents weary of bad news, 2014 dawned with aftershocks: claims (disputed) of low college preparedness among some athletes and more painful national publicity. Like it or not, this is not over.
  From the March/April 2014 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review
• Crowder Won’t Face Charges in Fraud Investigation
  March 2014 news report
• UNC Launching New Inquiry With Outside Counsel
  February 2014 news report
• Nyang’oro Indicted in Probe of Academic Fraud
  December 2013 news report
• Georgia Sports Agent Charged In Football Probe
  October 2013 news report
• Former Tutor Indicted, Charged With Violating Sports Agent Law
  October 2013 news report
• A Flag Is Down: A football season that started with high expectations is being played beneath the shadow of an investigation into improper outside contacts and academic misconduct. From the November/December 2010 issue of the Carolina Alumni Review.

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