Point Shaving & Fixes ·
Ed Martin’s Gambling Case Reaches Michigan Basketball
A 2002 federal indictment alleged concealed gifts and loans to four former players. Michigan later found NCAA violations and imposed sanctions on its program.
In April 1999, FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents raided Ed Martin’s home and other properties. They seized cash, gambling records and financial documents. The investigation into Martin’s gambling activities would also reach the University of Michigan basketball program, where he had been a booster—and where questions about his dealings with players had resisted years of inquiry.
The federal allegations became public on March 21, 2002, when an indictment was unsealed and Martin and his wife, Hilda, were arrested on charges of running an illegal gambling business, conspiracy and money laundering. Martin, a 68-year-old retired Ford electrician, was accused of making gifts and loans to four former Michigan players—Chris Webber, Robert Traylor, Maurice Taylor and Louis Bullock—between 1988 and 1999. According to the indictment, the loans helped conceal profits from his alleged gambling operations at Detroit-area auto plants.
“All of the money that was loaned to the basketball players and their families by Eddie L. Martin was concealed and kept secret,” U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins said. But Collins also said none of the players or their families was involved in a criminal investigation. The allegations against Martin did not make the players criminal defendants.
The indictment alleged that Webber received about $280,000, beginning in high school and continuing through his sophomore season at Michigan. His agent, Fallasha Erwin, questioned the figure. “He didn’t live the kind of lifestyle that would coincide with somebody with that kind of money,” Erwin said. Martin had refused to cooperate with Michigan’s investigations, and the players named in the indictment had either told university investigators they did not take loans from him or declined to talk.
Michigan had banned Martin from its programs in March 1997. It had also tightened complimentary-ticket policies and restricted access around the Crisler Arena tunnel. After receiving the indictment, the university said it would continue cooperating with federal investigators, the NCAA and the Big Ten. The NCAA said its enforcement staff would review the available information before deciding what steps to take.
By November 2002, the university said its investigation had substantiated the allegations. At a November 7 press conference, President Mary Sue Coleman said a July 26 meeting between university attorneys and Martin’s attorneys had detailed loans to the four players that violated NCAA rules. Athletic Director Bill Martin described the limit of the earlier inquiries: “Despite our best efforts, we were not able to substantiate the allegations of loans to the four players until the federal government got involved.”
The university submitted its findings to the NCAA and announced its own sanctions: two years of probation, exclusion from the 2003 NCAA and National Invitation tournaments, repayment of about $450,000 in postseason revenue, and forfeiture of victories involving the ineligible players. “There is no excuse for what happened,” Coleman said. “It was wrong, plain and simple.”
The consequences reached beyond a report or a promise of tighter oversight. Michigan removed four championship banners from Crisler Arena, including those marking its 1992 and 1993 Final Four appearances. The university said the affected victories would also disappear from its programs and written materials.