Insert profanity of your choice here.
Several Florida football players are now officially facing charges from their misadventures with school issued credit cards this summer.
For starters, a sworn complaint affidavit has been filed against junior wide receiver Antonio Callaway, per Alachua County court records. That is a third degree felony.
Callaway, plus running back Jordan Scarlett, linebackers Ventrell Miller and James Houston, defensive linemen Richerd Desir-Jones and Keivonnis Davis and wide receiver Rick Wells are all facing a pair of charges: one for fraud/obtaining property for under $20,000 and another one for possession and use of another person’s credit card without consent.
But it’s freshman defensive end Jordan Smith who appears to be in the most trouble. Smith has been hit with five felony charges, all of them varying degrees of fraud. Four of them are for using another person’s ID/credit card without consent and the fifth is for obtaining property under $20,000.
Callaway transferred $1,970 from a stolen credit card into his UF account, while Scarlett transferred a slightly lower total of $1,940 into his. Scarlett is also accused of transferring money from a credit card belonging to Gabriel Robinson of Carlsbad, CA, into the account of one of his friends.
Per the Orlando Sentinel, both Scarlett and Callaway used a credit card belonging to James Sturiale, also of Carlsbad, CA, to transfer the nearly four thousand dollars to their UF accounts. They then ordered MacBook Pro laptops and Beats Solo 3 headphones using the stolen money.
If there is any good news in this, it’s that none of the players are likely to be arrested, per the Sentinel. Many of them might qualify for a diversion program that would remove these charges from their records. Entrance into these diversion programs is usually dependent on the people involved paying back any stolen funds, do some form of community service and avoid other criminal issues in order to eventually have charges removed from their records.
But to answer the most pressing question on most people’s minds: I still say it’s possible that these guys all return to the field this season, but that possibility just took another hit. This is a major step forward toward getting some closure, but felony charges are bad.
McElwain didn’t say how exactly these players’ statuses would change, but when asked if they would, his two word answer spoke volumes: “darn right.”
We’ll continue to monitor this story and update it with new information as it becomes available.
