Nevin Shapiro: Crazy Insane or Insane Crazy?

We are all very much aware of Nevin Shapiro and the scandal he brought about at the University Of Miami. It has been talked about over and over again by fans, broadcasters, and the talking heads at ESPN. While we all knew that Shapiro represents possibly the worst section of humanity, those willing to lie to anyone in order to take their hard earned money, he is recently doing a lot more to show exactly the type of person he is. Over the past few months, he reportedly has been sending emails to contacts outside of his prison cell. The Miami Herald got hold of some of these, and posted them in a story outlining just how desperate a man Shapiro is, and just how much he hates the university he once loved.

Not only does Shapiro sound hurt, pissy, angry, and partially insane in these emails, but he seems vastly uninformed of exactly what is going on with the investigation by the NCAA, and just how much his opinion matters to the FBI.

"The public is going to hate me worse in the next coming months," Shapiro, serving a 20-year sentence for a Ponzi scheme, wrote in numerous e-mails over the past few months. "It’s going to be severe and catastrophic. My feelings are getting inflamed and I’m going to pop off pretty soon with regards to them and the NCAA. I’m coming for them both [UM and former players] and I’m going to be successful"

This quote, again from the Herald, explains in not so many words exactly why Shapiro is so angry. It is well known from the beginning of this investigation that he is angry solely because a lot of the players he allegedly paid and gave gifts to turned their backs on him once they left. He was under the impression that he could buy his friends, and that he would always have these guys in his back pocket. How he managed to convince himself that once these guys went on to sign multi-million dollar contracts with the NFL that his gift of a couple thousand bucks would hold court is beyond me.

"I’m taking that program down to Chinatown and the former players and links to that program. Why? Because the U.S. government lined up 47 former players to testify against me in open court if I went to trial. That in itself is motivation to shove it up their collective [butts]."

This is where it seems like Shapiro fully flies off the rails. He is basically claiming that the US government is less concerned about his Ponzi scheme, and more invested in finding out exactly what these former players took from him years ago. It is quite clear that at this point Ol' Nevin is scraping the bottom of the barrel here, because the head of the FBI's Newark division (which is the division mainly responsible for investigating Shapiro's Ponzi scheme) is on record as saying that the claims Shapiro has levied against the former players do not qualify as federal crimes, and that the FBI is in no way investigating his allegations. Remember a while ago when the school decided to pay money to the trustee in charge of recovering the Ponzi funds in exchange for an agreement that none of the former players indicated in Shapiro's allegations would be subpoenaed to testify in court? Yeah...that still stands, and with the FBI basically saying "We don't care", it's a mystery as to which branch of the government has these 47 players lined up to talk.

Shapiro is also claiming that there are very serious allegations that have not even come to light yet that the NCAA is working with, and also that the true number of players he implicated is 114, not just the 72 that were listed in the Yahoo! report. OK, Nevin, I'll bite. So you're telling me that after a long and extensive foray into your circle of hell, Charles Robinson only published HALF of what you did at the University Of Miami, in an effort to help the NCAA keep secret the full nature of what they are investigating? Or that not one person at the university, current or former, has heard of any other claims, allegations, or rules that have been broken in the entire time the NCAA has been speaking with the school? Seems legit. The fact is is that many of the former players implicated in this whole thing, along with former coaches and Miami business owners have either never been contacted by the NCAA regarding Shapiro, or have refused to talk along with flat out denying what he is saying. What is to be taken from all of this is the fact that Shapiro is in full on backed-into-a-corner mode, and is lashing out about anything he thinks may help his cause against the Hurricanes. He is showing himself to be a spurned little child who is angry at the people he thought he had bought for life.

Oh, and in case you doubt the current state of his psyche, here is the most damning of quotes from the guy who, if you remember, pled guilty to orchestrating not only the worst collegiate scandal since SMU, but also the second largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history to the tune of $930 million dollars:

"I'm more of a victim than a Ponzi schemer and assailant."