Basketball star arrested for posing as teen claims he didn’t know he was actually 29

Details have emerged on how Jonathan Nicola, who last week made headlines when he was revealed to be nearly 30 years old despite a year playing basketball for Canada’s Catholic Central High as an 11th grader, was discovered to be an adult rather than a teenager.

In a hearing last week, Nicola testified that he didn’t know his true age. He only knew that he had been approached by a “coach Steyn,” who he said produced the paperwork that allowed him to obtain a student visa and play basketball in Canada.

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However, Nicola was discovered when he applied for a visa to travel to the United States. At the time, he had been at Catholic Central High for about a month. During the application process, he was fingerprinted, and that was when the age discrepancy was discovered.

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Nicola’s fingerprints matched those of a man who had applied for entry to the United States in 2015, and the application to the United States listed his birth year as 1986, while the visa application he used to gain entry into Canada marked his birth year as 1998.

Upon realizing the discrepancy, The Canadian Border Services Agency detained Nicola last week for “contravening the Immigration Refugee Protection Act.”