More Trouble at UNLV : College basketball: Records show Anthony Jones drove businessman’s sports car in apparent violation of NCAA rules.

While he was playing basketball at the University of Nevada Las Vegas four years ago, star forward Anthony Jones drove a sports car belonging to a UNLV booster in apparent violation of NCAA rules, court and state records show.

Jones, who was voted co-player of the year in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. (now known asthe Big West) as a senior in 1985-86, drove a Mazda RX7 belonging to C.J. Lotter, a Las Vegas businessman and prominent supporter of the UNLV basketball program, court and Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles records show.

UNLV has been the subject of a preliminary inquiry by the NCAA since October of 1987. The NCAA has a four-year statute of limitations on rules violations. But, because the inquiry began in 1987, the school can be held accountable for violations documented by the NCAA as far back as 1983.

Jones, currently playing for the NBA Dallas Mavericks, said he purchased the car and financed it himself. But Lotter acknowledged that he bought the car and made payments on it.

Lotter said he leased the car to Jones as part of a program in which he leased cars to employees of telemarketing and printing businesses he operated at the time. Lotter said he gave Jones a summer job when Jones was attending UNLV.

Lotter conceded, however, that he leased vehicles primarily to his sales personnel and other “key people.” He said that he made an exception for Jones who, according to Lotter, was a $5-an-hour employee in the shipping department.

“I like Anthony,” he said. “Sometimes you do things for people you like.”

Lotter also said that, when he leased cars to Jones and other employees, he provided insurance and allowed for fluctuating payments, features that generally aren’t included in leases offered by regular auto leasing agencies.

NCAA rules prohibit a booster from providing an athlete with a benefit that isn’t available to the school’s student body in general.

Lotter, 51, is involved in the UNLV Scholarship Donor Program, in which the school solicits donations to its athletic scholarship fund in exchange for basketball and football season-ticket packages. Court records show that in 1987, a telemarketing firm headed by Lotter and another UNLV booster put $31,500 into the scholarship program in exchange for three years’ worth of season tickets.

According to a source with intimate knowledge of the UNLV basketball program, who asked not to be identified, Lotter had “control” of the RX7 driven by Jones, and UNLV coaches used the arrangement as a means of motivating Jones. At one point during Jones’ career at UNLV, the source said, the car was taken away from Jones for about a week and parked at Lotter’s office because UNLV coaches were unhappy with Jones.

Toshiko Primrose, a former UNLV student who dated several players while Jones was at the school, said: “For some reason--I don’t know why--it just seems to me like they (UNLV players) always lost their cars. . . . For some reason, I think he (Jones) had that car, and then he didn’t (have it). I don’t know why.”

Lotter said he took the car away from Jones only when the player failed to make the payments after his senior season, and he denied that Jones’ use of the car was related to his performance on the basketball court.

Lotter said his only conversation with anyone at UNLV concerning the arrangement was in making sure it was permitted under NCAA rules. He said a UNLV official whose name he could not remember told him that the arrangement would not violate NCAA rules..

Brad Rothermel, UNLV athletic director, said he knew nothing about the arrangement.

Coach Jerry Tarkanian said he was aware only that Jones had obtained a car from Lotter and that Mark Warkentien, a UNLV assistant coach at the time, had approved the arrangement.

Warkentien, who is currently an assistant to Rothermel involved in monitoring rules compliance, declined to be interviewed.

Said Tarkanian: “A.J. (Jones) was working for him (Lotter) or something. It’s been a long time. But Warkentien was on top of it. Everything like that, we’ve been on top of.”

However, Rick Evrard, NCAA director of legislative services, said NCAA rules would prohibit any auto leasing arrangement for an athlete that contains elements not generally available to others in the student body.

When the Lotter-Jones arrangement was described to him in general terms, Evrard said: “It seems clear to me that there is enough gray area to presume that the athlete is driving a car contrary to (NCAA) legislation. If what you have presented are the facts, the student-athlete has been provided an extra benefit.”

The NCAA’s inquiry into the UNLV program was prompted by a series of articles in Newsday describing ways in which UNLV coaches, boosters and other representatives of the school apparently broke NCAA rules in their dealings with Lloyd Daniels. Daniels is a former New York City high school star who signed with UNLV in April of 1986 but was barred from playing for the Rebels by Tarkanian after being arrested on drug charges in February of 1987.

Many of the allegations in the Newsday series centered on Warkentien, who became Daniels’ legal guardian while Daniels was attending Mt. San Antonio College in the fall of ’86.

Although the initial focus of the inquiry was UNLV’s recruitment of Daniels, the NCAA has scrutinized other aspects of the UNLV basketball program, including the cars driven by Rebel players.

Rothermel said that UNLV, at the request of the NCAA, conducted an “audit” of the cars being driven by current UNLV players.

“We’re all in order on that,” he said. “At least as far as I know, we are. They (the NCAA) haven’t suggested to us that we’re not.”

Jones is a former Washington, D.C., high school star who transferred to UNLV in 1983 after two seasons at Georgetown. He said he was introduced to Lotter by Keith Starr, then a graduate assistant coach at UNLV, during a chance encounter in a Las Vegas restaurant. Jones said he and Lotter then became friends.

“C.J. and I, we spent time up at his cabin fishing,” Jones said, “totally a friend-type thing. It had nothing to do with his relationship with Tarkanian or anything. It was just a relationship that he and I developed.”

Jones said he worked packing boxes in Lotter’s shipping department in 1985, the summer before Jones’ senior season at UNLV.

Jones said an NCAA enforcement representative who interviewed him about UNLV last year in Dallas asked him about his relationship with Lotter. “They asked me if I knew him and worked for him,” he said.

But, Jones said, the NCAA investigator asked about cars only in a general way. “They (the NCAA) asked me about everything, really--where I stayed, who I stayed with, what I was driving, if I sold my (game) tickets,” he said. “And I told them everything was legitimate.”

In interviews with The Times, Jones acknowledged that he drove a Mazda RX7 while attending UNLV, but said that Lotter had nothing to do with the car. At first, Jones said he leased the car through General Motors Acceptance Corp. In a second interview, Jones said he purchased the car at Cliff Findlay Oldsmobile in Las Vegas and financed it through a lending agency whose name he could not recall.

“I got the car from Findlay Oldsmobile, and I had payments,” he said, “as simple as that.”

But court and state records tell a different story.

According to records on file with the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, the only vehicle registered to Jones while he was attending UNLV was a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass he purchased for $4,000 from Sunland Motors in Las Vegas on Sept. 30, 1983, about the time he enrolled at UNLV as a transfer student. The title was in Jones’ name until June 28, 1985, when it was issued to one of Lotter’s companies, Las Vegas Specialties.

On Feb. 5, 1986, the middle of Jones’ senior season at UNLV, Jones received a speeding ticket in Las Vegas in a 1982 Mazda RX7 that was registered at the time to Lotter, according to records on file in Clark County Justice Court.

Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles records show that the car was purchased by Lotter from Findlay Oldsmobile on Oct. 1, 1984, for $9,812 and financed through First Interstate Bank of Nevada. The records show that the loan was paid off in January of 1986. The title to the vehicle carried Lotter’s name and home address until May of 1987.

Lotter said he bought the ’78 Cutlass from Jones by paying off the balance of Jones’ note on the vehicle. He said he then leased the RX7 to Jones. Lotter said he could not remember the terms of the lease but said that Jones “faithfully” made payments.

“He (Jones) just said to me, ‘I really like the car (the RX7). Is there any way I can get it?’ ” Lotter said. “And so I punched it up on the thing (calculator), told him what it would cost him, and he said, ‘I can do that.’ And, as I recall, in the summer months he paid me more, and in the winter months he paid me less. But he was, by and large, current. And I had other people do that, too. That wasn’t unusual.”

Lotter said he took the car back from Jones when Jones failed to keep up with his payments after his senior season.

Lotter said he provided insurance on the RX7 as well as other vehicles he leased so they would remain in his name until employees completed their lease obligations.

“The way I leased all of my cars was they (title and registration documents) stated my name,” he said. “I provided the insurance. . . . At the end of the time you pay me, you get it (the car) for $1 more, and we put it (the title) in your name. But usually I got nine out of 10 cars back.”

Leasing cars to employees, Lotter said, was a means of making extra money and making sure key employees didn’t leave for other jobs. “It was a way of keeping employees in a highly competitive business, keeping them with my company, because if they left me, they lost their cars,” he said.

Lotter merged his companies with those of another Las Vegas telemarketing entrepreneur, Donovan Burke, in August of 1986, to form D.B. World Sales, the largest telephone solicitation firm in Nevada at the time. It ceased operation in April of 1988 and five months later, the company’s property was seized by the Internal Revenue Service for non-payment of more than $500,000 in taxes. It was sold at public auction.

Last October, Lotter and two others were indicted by a state grand jury in Phoenix on five counts of fraud stemming from their involvement with a telemarketing firm, Moorgate Associates, Inc., that operated out of Tempe, Ariz. Lotter has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is free on $10,000 bond. A trial has been set for March 19.

Lotter, who said he hasn’t been contacted by the NCAA, declined to show records to The Times relating to the Jones lease, saying he believes those records were taken by the IRS when it seized D.B. World Sales property.

Times researcher Jim Cady contributed to this story.

ROUND 2: This time, UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian is expected to resolve matters with NCAA without going to court. Danny Robbins’ story, C10.