DES MOINES, Iowa — Ten more Iowa and Iowa State athletes and an Iowa basketball equipment manager caught in a 2023 statewide gambling raid joined a civil lawsuit Tuesday seeking unspecified monetary damages from the state and its law enforcement and criminal investigation agencies for violating the athletes' rights and tarnishing their reputations.
A federal judge has granted a motion allowing the 11 new plaintiffs to intervene in the lawsuit, which was filed in April by Des Moines attorneys Van Plumb and Matthew Boles on behalf of 26 current or former Iowa and ISU athletes.
Texas-based attorneys Grant Gerleman and James Roberts and Iowa-based Chris Sandy represent the 11 who joined the suit, bringing the number of plaintiffs to 37.
“Matt Boles and I are very excited to join forces with them as the old saying is true: in numbers there is strength,” Plumb said.
Most of the athletes who faced criminal charges related to the 2023 investigation agreed to plead guilty to underage gambling and pay a fine, and in exchange had an identity theft charge dismissed.
But Iowa State football players Isaiah Lee, Jirehl Brock and Enyi Uwazurike and wrestler Paniro Johnson did not accept plea deals and had all charges against them dropped in March because the Criminal Investigation Division was found to have misused tracking software that detected mobile gambling apps open on cellphones at ISU athletic facilities.
The civil suit alleges that the investigators' misconduct violated the athletes' Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and caused them pain, suffering, mental anguish, humiliation and damage to their personal reputations.
The suit alleged that investigators specifically violated her constitutional rights to be free from warrantless searches and unreasonable seizures and that investigators did not receive adequate training from the state, particularly in the proper use of Kibana tracking software produced by Canada-based GeoComply.
Athletes are prohibited from betting on any NCAA-sponsored sport. Most of the athletes involved were found to have registered their mobile betting accounts under a different name to avoid detection, usually that of a family member.
The investigation resulted in the loss of NCAA eligibility as well as criminal charges.
The new plaintiffs are ISU wrestlers Samuel Schuyler, Carter Schmidt, Nathan Schon, Drew Woodley and Johnson; ISU football players Terry Roberts and Jeremiah “Trey” Mathis III; ISU track athlete Cameron “Cam” Jones; Iowa wrestlers Brennan Swafford and Corey Cabanban; and Iowa basketball equipment manager Evan Schuster.
