Artesia Basketball Program Probed

The mother of a high school basketball standout from Denver has alleged that a recruiter with connections to Artesia High offered to pay rent, utilities and provide other financial compensation if her son attended the school.

Angela Hall said she offered e-mail correspondence and first-person accounts of her family’s experiences when she met with a school district investigator last week in Denver. Her son, Ray, a 6-foot-11 senior center for Denver Mullen High, was also interviewed.

“It’s not a clean program,” Angela Hall said of Artesia, summarizing what she told the investigator.

The Artesia-Bellflower-Cerritos Unified School District began a probe of the Artesia boys’ basketball program in September, after these allegations were made to authorities. Artesia Coach Scott Pera has been put on paid leave until the conclusion of the investigation. Through his attorney, he has denied any wrongdoing.

The allegations, if substantiated, could affect the amateur status and college eligibility of some players and bring sanctions from the federation that governs high school athletic competition in the state. School district officials, who will share their findings with the California Interscholastic Federation, said they expect their investigation to be complete in a week or so. They declined further comment.

The Halls -- Ray, his father, mother and sister -- spent a few days in June and then about a month in Southern California starting in July, after Ray was recruited by Roy White to play for RBC West, a Los Angeles-based Amateur Athletic Union team.

It was White who made the offer of financial assistance, when he learned of the family’s plan to return to Colorado, Angela Hall told the investigator.

Hall said White had hinted that he would help the family at various times during the summer.

“Originally, I thought it was a joke,” she said in Colorado this week during a 90-minute interview that recapped what she told the investigator. “My whole family laughed it off.”

But when White learned that the family, short on money and fed up with their living and work arrangements, was planning to leave, Angela Hall said he offered to pay thousands for rent, utilities and a “salary-type thing” for her husband.

“It was in a conversation,” Hall said during a recent telephone interview. “ ‘This is what we’d do for you if you wanted to stay.’ ”

White does not work for Artesia, but he ran an NCAA-sanctioned summer tournament there in July and RBC West played games at the school. He denied offering the Halls financial assistance, saying, “Without a doubt it’s not true.”

Pera has no official tie to White’s AAU team, but the Artesia coach was the host of another NCAA-sanctioned summer event that RBC West participated in later the same month. Through his attorney, Gary Stern, Pera said he has run the Artesia basketball program “consistent with the letter and spirit of the ABC district and CIF rules.”

Club teams such as RBC West are allowed to pay for necessary travel, room and board, apparel, equipment and some entertainment for players and their legal guardians. Payments beyond those expenses could jeopardize a player’s status as an amateur and therefore his college eligibility, an NCAA spokesman said. Such payments would also violate CIF rules governing high school competition within the state.

The RBC West team was financed by businessman Michael Glasser, co-founder of the apparel label Seven Jeans and the father of Artesia point guard Derek Glasser. Two other top Artesia players, Shawntell Norman and James Harden, also played for RBC West.

Michael Glasser said he poured $50,000 into RBC West to cover its expenses during the AAU season, which included trips to tournaments in North Carolina, New Jersey, Houston and two in Las Vegas from April to July. He said his sponsorship was limited to the club team.

Porter Cutrell, boys’ basketball coach at Denver Mullen High, said White, identifying himself as a representative of the shoe company Reebok, made at least five trips to Colorado last season scouting and attempting to recruit Ray Hall. A spokesman for Reebok said White does not work for the company.

White acknowledged he pursued Hall to be a member of RBC West’s team -- but not Artesia’s -- saying, “I’m a recruiter. I just get players to play on my team. I don’t care who wins CIF.”

Artesia is expected to have all five starters back from a 28-5 team that last season was runner-up in the CIF Southern Section’s III-AA division and advanced to the Southern California regional final of the state tournament.

Angela Hall said White originally recruited her son only for RBC West, but that she became suspicious of the club team’s tie to Artesia when White tried to steer her to the Park Apartments, just down the street from the school, and she discovered that the families of other Artesia basketball players were living there.

“I thought that was odd,” she said.

Ray Hall sought to enroll at Artesia on June 11, filling out preliminary paperwork. But he never completed the process.

An office worker at the apartments who asked not to be identified told The Times in September that six units in the complex were rented to the families of basketball players and that one man delivered rent on them each month in the form of money orders. The Times could confirm only that the families of Artesia players Norman and guard Jason Pruitt currently live there. Pruitt did not play for RBC West.

Hall said she filled out an application for the Park Apartments that White gave to her during a tournament in Las Vegas in July, and that he said the lease would be month to month. After that, the family put their cat into an apartment she said White indicated was theirs.

Hall said the cat had been in the apartment for two days before she learned, as she prepared to finalize the rent agreement, that pets were not allowed at the complex.

She said the misunderstanding prompted a loud argument at the rental office between White and the apartment manager, with White yelling, “Do you know how much money I bring in every month?”

The family never moved in.

Ricardo Dantas, manager of the Park Apartments, declined interview requests.

Said White: “I don’t pay people’s rent.”

Hall says otherwise, recalling that she witnessed an Artesia parent complaining about White at the school gym during a July tournament.

“The one parent says, ‘I’ll tell you, if I have to turn him upside down and shake him, I’ll get my money,’ ” Hall recalled in an interview. She declined to identify the parent.

The mother of Artesia center Shawntell Norman, Kathrine, who moved to the Park Apartments from Oklahoma last year, said White helped her financially once -- when he paid a $75 late fee on her rent. But she also said she and the recruiter had a brief relationship.

Hall told the investigator she saw money changing hands just once -- during a tournament at Artesia. She said she was heading to her car in the parking lot when she saw a parent hand money to White and say, “ ‘Take care of the parents.’ ” She would not name the parent for publication. White denies it happened.

Another of Hall’s allegations is that someone sent her a message using the e-mail address of Artesia Coach Pera on Aug. 19 -- the day the Halls left for Colorado.

The e-mail, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times, asks Hall not to speak with CIF Southern Section administrator Paul Castillo about her concerns.

It reads, in part: “I got your e-mail address from Roy. I understand that your family left today very upset with Michael and Roy over the school. I realize that your [sic] upset that they offered your family things and that is why you would not be staying....

“I am wanting to see if I can get you to understand what is at stake here. You did meet some of the players involved.... They are all great kids. If you talk to Paul at CIF like you said you would do, you would be risking the futures of these kids along with the rest of my players....

“Everything should have been told to your family up front. I understand that you don’t like what is going on at the school, but please think about these kids and myself before you call anyone.... “

The e-mail is signed, “Scott.”

Pera denies writing the e-mail. Michael Glasser, through his attorney, Keith Gregory, denied “giving [Hall] anything or offering her anything.”

Hall said the school district investigator questioned whether she had generated the e-mail herself, which she denied.

Pera was hired by Artesia five years ago from Pennsylvania to clean up a program that had to forfeit all its games in the 1997-98 and 1999-2000 school years for violating CIF bylaws regarding eligibility, undue influence and finances. Wayne Merino, who had coached the team to three state titles, was dismissed.

Hall, 34, has multiple sclerosis and is limited to a wheelchair after suffering paralysis below her waist that she blames on stress from her Artesia experience. She said the family originally intended to relocate to Southern California to help her health and that her son supported the move because he wanted to be closer to USC and UCLA, schools that were interested in recruiting him.

But Hall’s husband, a truck driver, failed to find a job comparable to what he had in Colorado. An attempt to rent a house also fell through. So, after staying for weeks at a motel in Bellflower, the Halls returned to Denver.

Late in August, Artesia’s new principal, Sergio Garcia, contacted Angela Hall by phone. Soon after, Gary Smuts, superintendent of the ABC district, spoke with her by phone and the investigation was opened.

On Oct. 3, Artesia parents and players, wearing red T-shirts that read, “We support Coach Pera,” held a rally at a park across the street from the school.

Stern, Pera’s attorney, told supporters: “Scott is devastated by all this. He didn’t do anything wrong to warrant or justify any action.”

Meanwhile, as Ray Hall prepares for his senior season at Mullen, his mother is refusing to back down even as law enforcement authorities investigate threats she has allegedly received by telephone, e-mail and in person. She said last month a man she recognized but whose name she did not know knocked on her door in the morning and gave her a message.

“I’m just here to let you know the e-mails are not a joke,” she said he told her. “You need to shut your mouth.”

Hall insists she is telling the truth.

“I understand I’m the one person that’s standing out here versus all these people saying, ‘ No, no, no,’ ” she said. “However, this one, lone person has nothing to gain and nothing to lose. This group of people have a lot to lose and a lot to gain if they say nothing.”

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Times staff writer Jerry Crowe contributed to this report.