In a shocking twist of events, Lew WON'T pursue blackmail charges against the guy who gave him thousands of athletic equipment. That's right Lew, the Lawrence PD is your personal problem solver, just call, report some guy bugging you, when you relize an investigation will turn up all sorts of cheating at your school, pretend to ignore it. Also hilarious that he "chose" to retire effective 60 days after ku owes him $600,000 AFTER TAX. I am so jealous of both the cheating at ku and the way Lew then scammed the ever living crap out of the yokels running ku. The man is kind of an icon to me.
Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins will not pursue a blackmail charge he made in April against former KU director of sports medicine William Dent, according to Perkins’ attorney, Steve McAllister.
“It remains an open file as I understand it,” McAllister told The Star. “If something else happened or there was new evidence, it could be pursued. But certainly, Lew’s not intending to pursue it at this time. Lew is ready to move on to other things.”
McAllister said that Lawrence police have completed their investigation, which began when Perkins identified himself as a victim of blackmail on April 16.
The police report was released to the public in late May, which led to Dent telling the Topeka Capital-Journal that he had been contacting Perkins about exercise equipment that was originally on loan to Perkins from Medical Outfitters, a KU athletics vendor.
Dent, who resigned from KU in November 2007, alleged that Perkins had received the exercise equipment in exchange for giving Medical Outfitters co-owners Mark Glass and Patrick Carpenter premium seats to KU men’s basketball games.
Dent told the newspaper that he had threatened to go public with the alleged ticket swap if Perkins did not pay him storage fees for the equipment, which Perkins gave to Dent in April 2009 for unknown reasons.
Glass told The Star that his company in 2005 loaned Perkins $15,000 of equipment that was intended to help him rehab from a surgery at his home. Glass said that Perkins was not expected to pay for the equipment but that his and Carpenter’s seats at Allen Fieldhouse did not improve because of the loan. Glass said he lost track of the equipment when Medical Outfitters went bankrupt in 2007.
The loan opened up questions about whether Perkins had violated Kansas’ ethics laws for state employees and Kansas Athletics’ code of business ethics. KU’s code states: “Kansas Athletics personnel may not accept gifts, payments, entertainment, privileges or other favors which might influence future decisions made by Kansas Athletics.”
The loan is currently being reviewed by the Kansas State Ethics Commission.
KU chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little asked for a university investigation into Perkins’ behavior, which eventually cleared Perkins of wrongdoing. Gray-Little, however, admitted that she did not know that Kansas Athletics’ business with Medical Outfitters increased in the years after Perkins received the loan.
According to KU athletic department records obtained by The Star through an open-records request, Medical Outfitters and its parent company made about $78,000 in sales from KU in 2006, one year after Perkins received the loan, an increase of nearly $50,000 from the previous year. In 2007, the same year Medical Outfitters filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it made about $300,000 in sales from KU.
In the university release that cleared Perkins, Gray-Little said that Perkins had made a back-rental payment on the equipment. Glass told The Star that Perkins in April sent him a personal check for $5,000. McAllister said that Perkins was trying to ease any ethical concerns that existed.
On June 10, Perkins announced that he would retire on Sept. 4, 2011. Perkins, whose contract pays him $900,000 annually and runs through June 2015, is due a $600,000 after-tax retention bonus if he remains athletic director until June 30, 2011.
Read more:
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/07/13/2081689/ku-athletic-director-perkins-wont.html#ixzz0tfXTGTsb
