July 20, 2018
Former Penn basketball coach and current Boston Celtics assistant Jerome Allen allegedly accepted bribes to help a businessman’s son gain admission to Penn, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Allen, who played at Penn from 1992 to 1995 and coached the Quakers from 2009 to 2015, is not charged with a crime and was not named specifically in an indictment filed against the businessman, Philip Esformes. But Bloomberg reports a person familiar with the matter identifies Allen as one of the coaches referenced in the filing.
The coach in question was allegedly paid to designate Esformes’s son, Morris, as a “recruited basketball player” in order to increase his chance of admission to the school. According to Bloomberg, the school’s athletics website doesn’t list Esformes as a player for the Penn varsity team under Allen’s successor, Steve Donahue. He’s also not listed in the Quakers database of letter-winners.
The payments allegedly exceeded $74,000 in cash, as well as a recruiting trip to Miami and rides on private jets.
Esformes’s son, Bloomberg says, is currently a senior at Penn.
You can read the full report here.
This story will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
