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Former Indiana Pacers Director of International Scouting Pete Philo was able to sustain a lengthy career in the NBA, most recently with the Pacers, despite previously being convicted of raping a teenager, according to a story on Deadspin.com.

Philo was a long-time NBA scout who had previously worked for the Minnesota Timberwolves and Dallas Mavericks. He resigned from the Pacers in May 2016. Since then, he started TPG Sports, a consulting company. He resigned from that and gave up his ownership shares in the firm earlier this month.

Philo pled guilty to four counts of third-degree rape of a 15-year-old near Albany, New York, in 2000 when he was 26, according to the Deadspin report.

He also pled guilty to four misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child and four misdemeanor counts of sexual abuse. The maximum penalty was 24 years in prison, but Philo was sentenced to a year in jail and released after eight months, according to Deadspin.

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At the time, Saratoga County's sex-crimes prosecutor Jennifer A. Jensen blasted the sentence to the Albany Times Union: "The defendant held a position of trust and violated that trust when he engaged in sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old student, not once but on four separate occasions. This case is even worse because the defendant impregnated a 15-year-old and now we have a child raising a child.”

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Philo had to register as a sex offender. It's unclear whether he was able to build his NBA career because the league was lax in its background-checking process, because Philo lied on his resumes and bios, or both, according to the Deadspin report.

The older brother of Philo's victim alerted the Pacers to Philo's criminal history and provided the team with evidence of his rape conviction, according to the Deadspin article.

“I reached out to the Indiana Pacers on their website and said, ‘You’ve got a pedophile on your staff that you should look into,’” the brother told Deadspin. “They emailed me back and said, ‘This is a very serious situation, and we’ll look into these allegations.’ I said, ‘These aren’t allegations. These are facts.’ And I never heard a thing from them again.”

When asked for comment, Pacers Sports & Entertainment Senior Vice President for Corporate, Community and Public Relations Brent Rockwood emailed: "For confidentiality reasons, we do not provide records or detailed information about current or previous employees.

"However, we can confirm Mr. Philo has not been employed by or affiliated with the Indiana Pacers since 2016."

Rockwood did not immediately respond when asked for information on the franchise's process for background checks in the hiring process.

Most of the records in the case were sealed because juveniles were involved, according to Deadspin. However, Philo was registered as a sex offender in North Carolina and Texas in 2001.

Lester Rosen, an attorney, author of "The Safe Hiring Manual" and founder and CEO of California-based Employment Screening Resources, said he does not know anything about Philo and could only speak generally about backgrounds checks and what employers should do.

“Although it is complex and it has a lot of moving parts and there are a lot of legal compliance issues, in terms of employers it’s really a no-brainer,” he said of background checks. “It's quick. It's easy to set up. There’s a lot of firms that offer services. It's relatively inexpensive. … It has become a standard, due diligence part of the hiring process for most employers.”

Rosen said simply having a criminal record, even for a sexual offense, cannot be used to automatically disqualify a candidate. It comes down to the employer to determine if the record is relevant to the job.

“Frankly, even a person who has committed a sexual crime is entitled to employment, but the type of employment they ought to get normally is employment where others aren’t put at risk,” he said. “There’s a job for everybody, but everyone isn’t entitled to every job.”

Philo’s criminal background is easy to find. Type his name into the national sexual offender database at https://www.nsopw.gov, he comes up three times.

What remain unclear is whether the Pacers did a background check. And if the team knew about his past, why they — in addition to Dallas and Minnesota — went ahead and hired him.

Philo got his start in the NBA after developing a friendship with Mavericks' executive Donnie Nelson and was hired as a scout, according to Deadspin, becoming a full-time international scout in 2003. He was hired in Minnesota in 2005. Nelson declined comment through the team, according to Deadspin. Minnesota, which did not comment to StarTribune.com, fired their entire scouting staff in 2013 when a new president of basketball operations was hired.