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People around the Canadian Football League have known for a while that Jonathan Hefney was in trouble.

Severely injured in a game while playing for the Montreal Alouettes in 2015, Hefney struggled with both a disability and unmanageable medical bills ever since.

He underwent multiple surgeries for a career-ending neck injury, resulting from a helmet-on-helmet collision with Patrick Lavoie of the Ottawa Redblacks.

He suffered three fractured vertebrae and later had a steel plate and screws placed in his right shoulder and muscle tissue grafts just in hopes of regaining the use of his right arm.

At home in Rock Hill, S.C., he became a poster boy for the CFL’s lack of resources for American players with debilitating injuries, and talked numerous times about how onerous the medical bills were becoming.

No one knew just how desperate the situation was.

On Wednesday, the former Winnipeg Blue Bombers all-star defensive back was sentenced to nine years in prison in South Carolina for cocaine trafficking. He pleaded guilty a couple years after selling cocaine to York County drug agents on three separate occasions.