In April of 2000, Myron Piggie, a former convicted felon turned nationally prominent AAU basketball coach, was indicted on 11 counts of fraud by the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Piggie was charged with essentially the same crimes that rocked college basketball Tuesday. Ten men, including college assistants, a travel club coach, a financial planner, agents and shoe executives were arrested after a two-year FBI investigation, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan announced.

At the heart of both cases were payments to top high school players from shoe companies (then Nike, now Adidas) and agents that were designed to steer them to favorable colleges before later getting them to sign with the same shoe companies, agents and financial planners when they reached the NBA.

In 2000, the Kansas City-based Piggie had built the nation’s strongest AAU program, armed with star recruits from across the Midwest such as JaRon and Kareem Rush, Korleone Young, Corey Maggette, Earl Watson and Mike Miller.

Now he found himself seated, with a lawyer at his side, across a conference table from the FBI. The feds had him over a barrel thanks to a weapons charge that, because he was already a felon, carried an automatic nine-year sentence. To get that wiped out, prosecutors said he had to plead guilty to funneling money to the players, according to Piggie.

Yet there was a twist. Roll up on everyone else, Piggie said he was told, from college coaches to Nike officials, and the case would soften.

“They said they’d give me probation,” Piggie told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday.

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Piggie was a treasure trove of stories and dirt. His players were involved in wild recruiting wars by dozens of top college programs and their boosters. Agents hovered around at all times. And he enjoyed a tight and lucrative relationship with Nike. He could have clearly detailed how the underbelly of the sport works. He knew it all, big-name careers at his mercy.

“I could have talked about everyone,” Piggie said. “I could have put other people away. I could have put five, six schools on probation.”

Yet he didn’t. He refused to cooperate and wound up serving 37 months in federal prisons in Leavenworth, Kansas, and Forest City, Arkansas. He said the extended time was preferable to snitching, even if it was just about college basketball.

“That’s the street code,” Piggie said. “I couldn’t do that. Not where I was at that place; not how I was brought up.”

With that, college basketball avoided a far-reaching scandal that could have ripped the sport apart. Instead, all the blame was placed on Piggie, who was little more than a colorful middleman. After all, not even the government claimed it was his money that it said was getting doled out to the recruits. Maybe most importantly, many of his former players, to this day, still swear by him as a mentor and friend. That matters most.

So as the news of another scandal broke Tuesday he just laughed.

“See, it didn’t end when I got out, it just got bigger and bigger,” Piggie said.

College basketball sits on edge again, assistant coaches at four schools (Arizona, Auburn, Oklahoma State and USC) arrested. So, too, was another big-time AAU coach (this one in Florida), agents, a financial planner and a shoe executive. Three more schools (Louisville, Miami and South Carolina) were mentioned in indictments, although the details suggest NCAA trouble and not formal charges.

The feds again are looking for people to flip on the sport, to tell tales, to point fingers, to bring evidence. Tuesday they asked witnesses and even perpetrators to come forward and earn leniency. Seventeen years ago a Kansas City street guy and one-time drug dealer rebuffed them. What about with these guys?

“They’ll talk,” Piggie said Tuesday with a laugh. “They’ve got no balls. These are basketball coaches; they’ll do whatever to save themselves.”

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