Bishop Sycamore

[Irishman]

[Gipper]

I saw reports on TV this morning that they may be a fake high school of former JUCO players.

[Gipper]

18 hours ago, PHJIrish said:

IMG is indeed not a regular high school program.  Their campus is massive and includes a golf course.  It is a prep school for athletic purposes only. I agree that they should not be labeled a "high school" by Espn.  There are plenty of high schools in the United States of America to fill the needs of Espn.

it also has a hotel--I drive by it frequently from Tampa Airport to Siesta Key.

[TigerFan20]

5 minutes ago, Gipper said:

I saw reports on TV this morning that they may be a fake high school of former JUCO players.

Yup! It’s ridiculous, someone posted that they are under investigation and the HC was scamming a church

[PHJIrish]

51 minutes ago, Gipper said:

it also has a hotel--I drive by it frequently from Tampa Airport to Siesta Key.

The husband of a friend's husband died back in 2014.  She was selling her winter home and I wife and I went down to help her.  It was just a couple of miles from IMG.  We passed by almost every day but didn't wander onto the campus.  It sure was impressive from the perimeter though.🙂

[Footballking16]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5684336001
 

Appears that Bishop Sycamore wrote bad checks at the hotel in Canton in which they were staying the night of the IMG game. This might make for a better ending than Catch Me If You Can.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Footballking16

[TigerFan20]

1 minute ago, Footballking16 said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5684336001
 

Appears that Bishop Sycamore wrote bad checks at the hotel in Canton in which they were staying the night of the IMG game. This might make for a better ending than Catch Me If You Can.

🤦‍♂️

[temptation]

5 minutes ago, Footballking16 said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5684336001
 

Appears that Bishop Sycamore wrote bad checks at the hotel in Canton in which they were staying the night of the IMG game. This might make for a better ending than Catch Me If You Can.

Isn’t Canton basically a two hour drive from Columbus, lol?

[ASJCPUMA]

Would one say their season and future is probably OVER!

[NLCTigerFan07]

Imagine being affiliated with the Bishop Sycamore "program", agreeing to a game on ESPN, thinking it was going to somehow BENEFIT the scam you were running!?!?! Of course, maybe that was the plan all along. Somehow keep things together until a pay day of some sorts and get out of dodge before you're found out. Don't see how that is likely though when you put the spotlight on your "program" for a nationwide audience. These guys can't even successfully run a scam!

*side note - at Trivia last night, we selected our team name as "Bishop Sycamore Quiz Bowl Team" ... we promptly placed 7th out of 8 teams 🤣

[Irishman]

6 minutes ago, NLCTigerFan07 said:

Imagine being affiliated with the Bishop Sycamore "program", agreeing to a game on ESPN, thinking it was going to somehow BENEFIT the scam you were running!?!?! Of course, maybe that was the plan all along. Somehow keep things together until a pay day of some sorts and get out of dodge before you're found out. Don't see how that is likely though when you put the spotlight on your "program" for a nationwide audience. These guys can't even successfully run a scam!

*side note - at Trivia last night, we selected our team name as "Bishop Sycamore Quiz Bowl Team" ... we promptly placed 7th out of 8 teams 🤣

Just ahead of Manti Teo's girlfriend's team? 😄

[Dave007]

This would be a fantastic story for one of those ESPN '30 for 30' documentaries.

[NLCTigerFan07]

11 minutes ago, Dave007 said:

This would be a fantastic story for one of those ESPN '30 for 30' documentaries.

"What if I told you a team made up of 19 and 20 year olds didn't come to play school..."

[MDAlum82]

Sadly and somewhat remarkably, this is not the first time this has been done by the same cast of characters.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/highschool/2021/09/02/bishop-sycamore-football-another-suspicious-high-school-christians-of-faith/5670371001/

 

The craziest part of the Bishop Sycamore story isn't that a possibly fictitious school sprouted up in Columbus, Ohio, and started scheduling football games against a string of powerhouse programs around the country.

It's that this had already been done before – and by many of the same people.

Just three years ago, a school called Christians of Faith (COF) Academy was created in Columbus under dubious circumstances, with a football team serving as its lone public face. The school did not appear to have a legitimate physical address. It's unclear what schooling actually took place. And it was run by a similar cast of characters who have been involved with Bishop Sycamore – including Roy Johnson, who went on to become the head football coach at the current school before he was fired earlier this week.

"It is using the exact same methods, the exact same schemes with the exact same people," said Ben Ferree, who investigated COF Academy during his previous job as the assistant director of officiating and sport management at the Ohio High School Athletic Association. 

"In some of Bishop Sycamore's early games in 2019, the first season that they played, they wore COF Academy's uniforms. So yeah, it is the exact same scam. They simply changed the name."

Bishop Sycamore is facing scrutiny this week after its nationally televised football game against IMG Academy on Sunday. Bishop Sycamore's 58-0 loss, which was later revealed to be its second game in three days, left ESPN's commentators questioning if they'd been deceived by the school and expressing concern for the safety of its players.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has since pledged an investigation into Bishop Sycamore, to ensure it is meeting minimum educational requirements and complying with state law.

Yet as Bishop Sycamore has started to unravel on a national stage, its ties to COF Academy have been somewhat overlooked.

Years before Bishop Sycamore had the spotlight, the Ohio Department of Education shut down COF Academy after making an unannounced visit to its listed address and finding that it "was not open for instruction and had no pupils in attendance."

Of the eight listed members of Bishop Sycamore's "staff and advisory board," five were also listed as staff members at COF Academy, according to annual reports filed with the Ohio Department of Education.

'AS FAR AS I KNOW, NONE OF THE KIDS DID ANY SCHOOL:' Questions mount over legitimacy of Bishop Sycamore

BISHOP SYCAMORE DIRECTOR ON ESPN GAME: Football program is not a 'scam'

Andre Peterson, who is Bishop Sycamore's founder and director, was not involved in running COF Academy, but his son played football for the school. He denies that Bishop Sycamore is anything other than a legitimate school. 

Meanwhile, COF Academy's leaders – Johnson and business partner Jay Richardson – have since faced a string of lawsuits alleging hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid loans and bills, according to court records obtained by USA TODAY Sports.

Richardson, who does not appear to be involved with Bishop Sycamore, did not respond to multiple messages from USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday. Johnson replied to an emailed list of questions by claiming, "I spoke to USA TODAY already." He did not respond to a follow-up email.

Lawsuit leads to money owed

Johnson initially described COF Academy to local media outlets as an online Christian school that was being bankrolled by the Richard Allen Group, which he said was the financial arm of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In a 2018 article published by ThisWeek Community News, which is part of the USA TODAY Network, Johnson said COF Academy had hired about 50 teachers and would enroll about 500 students that fall. The school did not have a functioning website, clear academic infrastructure or school building at the time. And it listed its address as the headquarters of the AME Church Third District, though Johnson talked repeatedly of plans to build a large campus in Columbus, with construction funded by the church.

"This is a passion project," he told ThisWeek in August 2018. "For the AME church, this wasn’t a make-money project."

It didn't take long for it to fall apart.

In September 2018, ThisWeek reported that the AME Church Third District had posted a statement on its website denying any affiliation with COF Academy or the Richard Allen Group.

It turns out the Richard Allen Group, which Johnson had described as the church's financial arm, is actually an LLC formed in 2014 by Johnson and Richardson, a former NFL linebacker who played collegiately at Ohio State.

Several months later, in November 2018, First Merchants Bank filed a lawsuit against both the Richard Allen Group and its co-founders after they took out a $100,000 loan on behalf of the AME Church to fund the COF Academy, then failed to repay it.

According to records filed as part of the lawsuit, Johnson and Richardson represented themselves on loan application forms as the secretary and president of the AME Church, respectively.

Johnson later admitted in a deposition that proceeds from the loan were distributed to a bank account held by Mjolnir Development, a fictitious trade name registered by the Richard Allen Group. He also acknowledged that there is no legal document that identifies the group as the financial arm of the church, though he and Richardson both claimed that the two entities had a relationship, according to filings in the civil case.

Rev. Taylor Thompson, who is identified in the filings as the AME Church's treasurer, said in a deposition that the church never saw any of the money. 

"We have no affiliation with (the Richard Allen Group) on a legal, contractual or even an agreement basis," Arthur Harmon, an attorney for the church, added Wednesday. "All the things they did should have no reflection on the AME Church Third District."

A judge granted the bank's motion for summary judgment in the case last week, ruling that Johnson and Richardson had engaged in "fraudulent misrepresentation," in part because they did not have attorneys and failed to respond to the bank's claims.

A hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 18 to determine how much money Johnson and Richardson will now owe, including interest and legal fees.

A Range Rover and unpaid hotel rooms

That lawsuit is one of at least three involving Johnson, Richardson and/or the Richard Allen Group that alleges an unpaid loan or bill during the COF Academy's brief existence.

In a second lawsuit, filed in August 2018, Heartland Bank sued the Richard Allen Group after it took out a loan of roughly $92,000 to purchase a 2017 Range Rover and failed to pay back the money. The group admitted to the allegation, and the car was seized and resold a few months later. It is unclear how much money Johnson and Richardson still owe the bank, if any.

The third lawsuit, filed in May 2019, alleged that Johnson and COF Academy had an outstanding balance of $110,685 at a Baymont Inn & Suites, where they rented rooms for three months. The lawsuit was dropped after the hotel's lawyer struggled to serve Johnson with the complaint and failed to apprise the court of his efforts to do so.

The hotel's lawyer did not respond to an email from USA TODAY Sports inquiring whether the balance was ever repaid.

Records in all three lawsuits show the plaintiffs repeatedly struggled to locate or contact Johnson to notify him of the litigation, prolonging the various proceedings.

Separately, Johnson told ThisWeek in 2019 that he was the subject of a U.S. Secret Service investigation pertaining to COF Academy. He said he had been informed that the investigation was closed.

"Because we didn't do anything wrong," Johnson said at the time. "Specifically, myself, I didn't fraud the church. I didn't fraud these kids. I didn't fraud anybody like that. That's what the federal investigators were looking at, and that's what they found."

When asked about Johnson's claims, a spokesperson for the Secret Service – which is tasked with investigating potential financial crimes in addition to protecting the president – told USA TODAY Sports in an email Wednesday that it "does not confirm the existence or absence of a potentially ongoing investigation."

'Didn't pass the smell test'

Peterson told USA TODAY Sports this week that his school is a new entity, separate from the COF Academy. 

"COF closed down, and then I started Bishop Sycamore in 2019," he said.

Corporate records in Ohio confirm that the "Bishop Sycamore Foundation" was registered as a nonprofit in August 2019. But Peterson had also started talking publicly about the new school before the proverbial dust had even settled on the old one.

"I liked the concept of what Roy was trying to do," Peterson told ThisWeek in early 2019. "Me and some of the other parents and some of the people that were involved decided to continue that."

Johnson told the outlet at the time that he helped Bishop Sycamore set up its website but "his attorneys have told him he 'can't really be involved' " with the new school.

In its early days, Bishop Sycamore tried to associate itself with a legitimate school in Columbus called YouthBuild. But YouthBuild backed out of a potential partnership before it was finalized, according to The Washington Post, and later sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bishop Sycamore when the school continued to publicly tout a relationship with YouthBuild.

The website for YouthBuild Columbus now features a prominent disclaimer at the top of its home page: "YBCCS IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH BISHOP SYCAMORE."

Like COF Academy before it, Bishop Sycamore has been accused of fielding players who are older than 18 or have used up their allotted four years of eligibility. At least twoschools cited these reasons when canceling games against Bishop Sycamore in 2019. Others declined to play them at all.

"When they were Christians of Faith, they wanted to play us, but we didn’t schedule them because of all the nuances and all the mystery behind the place," said Tom Lombardo, the football coach at St. Edward (Lakewood, Ohio) High School.

"We always knew that there was something that didn’t quite pass the eye and smell test, but none of what they said has turned out to be true."

Peterson denied claims that players on the current team are over age. He said some of them are juniors and seniors who have reclassified, the practice of staying back or jumping up a school year for the purpose of athletics. 

"It’s always been done, but just not on the scale to where people really cared or noticed," he said.

'Doing the same thing'

On multiple occasions in the course of a 45-minute interview this week, Peterson told USA TODAY Sports that Bishop Sycamore has existed for four years, only to later say it was actually founded in 2019.

He said he has poured "thousands of dollars" of his own money into the school, and denies that it is a scam.

"If this is a fraud, then I’m the dumbest fraudster ever," he said. "I put money in this. I don’t get money out of it and it was never designed to do that for me. It was always designed to be able to try to help these kids."

Few details exist about Bishop Sycamore, either in the most recent annual report it filed with the state of Ohio or its website, in which the "About Us" and "Staff" sections were blank before the entire site was taken down.

Peterson said tuition at the school costs $2,000 and that the plan prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was to use a "blended learning" environment, where schooling predominantly takes place online as "one of the ways to streamline the cost of what we do." He said there are no full-time teachers, but coaches and other adults hang around the students to make sure work gets done.

He also said the student body consists of between 75 and 80 students, about 95% of whom play sports. In its most recent annual report filed with the state, for the 2020-21 academic year, Bishop Sycamore reported a total enrollment of three.

It has until Sept. 30 to file its annual report for 2021-22.

"They are doing the same thing that they did (at) COF," former COF Academy player Ar'mon Mackey wrote in a Twitter direct message to USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday.

"They lied to me and screwed me over. When I (saw) the Bishop Sycamore stuff, I was telling players that it’s not legit, but they didn’t listen to me."

What's next?

The future of Bishop Sycamore – and its one-time head coach – is now unclear.

Johnson has an active warrant out for his arrest stemming from a 2020 domestic violence incident, Delaware County (Ohio) Sherriff's Office director of public relations Tracy Whited confirmed to USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday. According to court records, Johnson's girlfriend told police that he pushed her and hit her in the lip. Johnson denied touching her but spent three days in jail.

USA TODAY Sports does not name victims of domestic assault without their permission.

Johnson later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, criminal mischief, and was placed on probation. A warrant was issued for his arrest on July 2 after he failed to meet some of the conditions of his probation, according to court records.

As for Bishop Sycamore, at least four schools had pulled out of their scheduled games against the school as of Tuesday evening, some citing concerns over liability or safety. And the department of education investigation that Gov. DeWine announced Tuesday is likely to uncover more details about the nature of Bishop Sycamore's educational offerings. 

The Canton Police Department also said Wednesday it had received a report of two invalid checks totaling $3,596 at a hotel where the team rented 25 rooms last week. It has identified two suspects in the case, according to The Canton Repository.

"You hear their story, you go, ‘OK, all right, it sounds like you want to do good,' " said Ray Holtzclaw, whose son, Judah, briefly played for Bishop Sycamore. "Then the example they set for the kids is, ‘OK, we’re not going to pay our bill. We’re just going to walk away and get somewhere else.’ You can’t keep doing that with kids that are watching you."

Holtzclaw said he was left on the hook for a four-figure hotel bill earlier this year, which Bishop Sycamore promised to reimburse and never did.

Meanwhile, in March, a new lawsuit hit the docket in Franklin County, filed against Johnson and Peterson. A transportation company alleges the two men hired buses from the past year on behalf of a charity called "ISE Foundation," which does not exist as a legal entity in Ohio.

The company, Cardinal Transportation, claims Johnson and Peterson now owe it roughly $13,000. The bill, at least according to court records, has yet to be paid.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad. Follow Chris Bumbaca and Lorenzo Reyes at @BOOMbaca and @LorenzoGReyes.

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by MDAlum82

[temptation]

1 hour ago, MDAlum82 said:

Sadly and somewhat remarkably, this is not the first time this has been done by the same cast of characters.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/highschool/2021/09/02/bishop-sycamore-football-another-suspicious-high-school-christians-of-faith/5670371001/

 

The craziest part of the Bishop Sycamore story isn't that a possibly fictitious school sprouted up in Columbus, Ohio, and started scheduling football games against a string of powerhouse programs around the country.

It's that this had already been done before – and by many of the same people.

Just three years ago, a school called Christians of Faith (COF) Academy was created in Columbus under dubious circumstances, with a football team serving as its lone public face. The school did not appear to have a legitimate physical address. It's unclear what schooling actually took place. And it was run by a similar cast of characters who have been involved with Bishop Sycamore – including Roy Johnson, who went on to become the head football coach at the current school before he was fired earlier this week.

"It is using the exact same methods, the exact same schemes with the exact same people," said Ben Ferree, who investigated COF Academy during his previous job as the assistant director of officiating and sport management at the Ohio High School Athletic Association. 

"In some of Bishop Sycamore's early games in 2019, the first season that they played, they wore COF Academy's uniforms. So yeah, it is the exact same scam. They simply changed the name."

Bishop Sycamore is facing scrutiny this week after its nationally televised football game against IMG Academy on Sunday. Bishop Sycamore's 58-0 loss, which was later revealed to be its second game in three days, left ESPN's commentators questioning if they'd been deceived by the school and expressing concern for the safety of its players.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has since pledged an investigation into Bishop Sycamore, to ensure it is meeting minimum educational requirements and complying with state law.

Yet as Bishop Sycamore has started to unravel on a national stage, its ties to COF Academy have been somewhat overlooked.

Years before Bishop Sycamore had the spotlight, the Ohio Department of Education shut down COF Academy after making an unannounced visit to its listed address and finding that it "was not open for instruction and had no pupils in attendance."

Of the eight listed members of Bishop Sycamore's "staff and advisory board," five were also listed as staff members at COF Academy, according to annual reports filed with the Ohio Department of Education.

'AS FAR AS I KNOW, NONE OF THE KIDS DID ANY SCHOOL:' Questions mount over legitimacy of Bishop Sycamore

BISHOP SYCAMORE DIRECTOR ON ESPN GAME: Football program is not a 'scam'

Andre Peterson, who is Bishop Sycamore's founder and director, was not involved in running COF Academy, but his son played football for the school. He denies that Bishop Sycamore is anything other than a legitimate school. 

Meanwhile, COF Academy's leaders – Johnson and business partner Jay Richardson – have since faced a string of lawsuits alleging hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid loans and bills, according to court records obtained by USA TODAY Sports.

Richardson, who does not appear to be involved with Bishop Sycamore, did not respond to multiple messages from USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday. Johnson replied to an emailed list of questions by claiming, "I spoke to USA TODAY already." He did not respond to a follow-up email.

Lawsuit leads to money owed

Johnson initially described COF Academy to local media outlets as an online Christian school that was being bankrolled by the Richard Allen Group, which he said was the financial arm of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In a 2018 article published by ThisWeek Community News, which is part of the USA TODAY Network, Johnson said COF Academy had hired about 50 teachers and would enroll about 500 students that fall. The school did not have a functioning website, clear academic infrastructure or school building at the time. And it listed its address as the headquarters of the AME Church Third District, though Johnson talked repeatedly of plans to build a large campus in Columbus, with construction funded by the church.

"This is a passion project," he told ThisWeek in August 2018. "For the AME church, this wasn’t a make-money project."

It didn't take long for it to fall apart.

In September 2018, ThisWeek reported that the AME Church Third District had posted a statement on its website denying any affiliation with COF Academy or the Richard Allen Group.

It turns out the Richard Allen Group, which Johnson had described as the church's financial arm, is actually an LLC formed in 2014 by Johnson and Richardson, a former NFL linebacker who played collegiately at Ohio State.

Several months later, in November 2018, First Merchants Bank filed a lawsuit against both the Richard Allen Group and its co-founders after they took out a $100,000 loan on behalf of the AME Church to fund the COF Academy, then failed to repay it.

 

According to records filed as part of the lawsuit, Johnson and Richardson represented themselves on loan application forms as the secretary and president of the AME Church, respectively.

Johnson later admitted in a deposition that proceeds from the loan were distributed to a bank account held by Mjolnir Development, a fictitious trade name registered by the Richard Allen Group. He also acknowledged that there is no legal document that identifies the group as the financial arm of the church, though he and Richardson both claimed that the two entities had a relationship, according to filings in the civil case.

Rev. Taylor Thompson, who is identified in the filings as the AME Church's treasurer, said in a deposition that the church never saw any of the money. 

"We have no affiliation with (the Richard Allen Group) on a legal, contractual or even an agreement basis," Arthur Harmon, an attorney for the church, added Wednesday. "All the things they did should have no reflection on the AME Church Third District."

A judge granted the bank's motion for summary judgment in the case last week, ruling that Johnson and Richardson had engaged in "fraudulent misrepresentation," in part because they did not have attorneys and failed to respond to the bank's claims.

A hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 18 to determine how much money Johnson and Richardson will now owe, including interest and legal fees.

A Range Rover and unpaid hotel rooms

That lawsuit is one of at least three involving Johnson, Richardson and/or the Richard Allen Group that alleges an unpaid loan or bill during the COF Academy's brief existence.

In a second lawsuit, filed in August 2018, Heartland Bank sued the Richard Allen Group after it took out a loan of roughly $92,000 to purchase a 2017 Range Rover and failed to pay back the money. The group admitted to the allegation, and the car was seized and resold a few months later. It is unclear how much money Johnson and Richardson still owe the bank, if any.

The third lawsuit, filed in May 2019, alleged that Johnson and COF Academy had an outstanding balance of $110,685 at a Baymont Inn & Suites, where they rented rooms for three months. The lawsuit was dropped after the hotel's lawyer struggled to serve Johnson with the complaint and failed to apprise the court of his efforts to do so.

The hotel's lawyer did not respond to an email from USA TODAY Sports inquiring whether the balance was ever repaid.

Records in all three lawsuits show the plaintiffs repeatedly struggled to locate or contact Johnson to notify him of the litigation, prolonging the various proceedings.

Separately, Johnson told ThisWeek in 2019 that he was the subject of a U.S. Secret Service investigation pertaining to COF Academy. He said he had been informed that the investigation was closed.

"Because we didn't do anything wrong," Johnson said at the time. "Specifically, myself, I didn't fraud the church. I didn't fraud these kids. I didn't fraud anybody like that. That's what the federal investigators were looking at, and that's what they found."

When asked about Johnson's claims, a spokesperson for the Secret Service – which is tasked with investigating potential financial crimes in addition to protecting the president – told USA TODAY Sports in an email Wednesday that it "does not confirm the existence or absence of a potentially ongoing investigation."

'Didn't pass the smell test'

Peterson told USA TODAY Sports this week that his school is a new entity, separate from the COF Academy. 

"COF closed down, and then I started Bishop Sycamore in 2019," he said.

Corporate records in Ohio confirm that the "Bishop Sycamore Foundation" was registered as a nonprofit in August 2019. But Peterson had also started talking publicly about the new school before the proverbial dust had even settled on the old one.

"I liked the concept of what Roy was trying to do," Peterson told ThisWeek in early 2019. "Me and some of the other parents and some of the people that were involved decided to continue that."

Johnson told the outlet at the time that he helped Bishop Sycamore set up its website but "his attorneys have told him he 'can't really be involved' " with the new school.

In its early days, Bishop Sycamore tried to associate itself with a legitimate school in Columbus called YouthBuild. But YouthBuild backed out of a potential partnership before it was finalized, according to The Washington Post, and later sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bishop Sycamore when the school continued to publicly tout a relationship with YouthBuild.

The website for YouthBuild Columbus now features a prominent disclaimer at the top of its home page: "YBCCS IS IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH BISHOP SYCAMORE."

Like COF Academy before it, Bishop Sycamore has been accused of fielding players who are older than 18 or have used up their allotted four years of eligibility. At least twoschools cited these reasons when canceling games against Bishop Sycamore in 2019. Others declined to play them at all.

"When they were Christians of Faith, they wanted to play us, but we didn’t schedule them because of all the nuances and all the mystery behind the place," said Tom Lombardo, the football coach at St. Edward (Lakewood, Ohio) High School.

"We always knew that there was something that didn’t quite pass the eye and smell test, but none of what they said has turned out to be true."

Peterson denied claims that players on the current team are over age. He said some of them are juniors and seniors who have reclassified, the practice of staying back or jumping up a school year for the purpose of athletics. 

"It’s always been done, but just not on the scale to where people really cared or noticed," he said.

'Doing the same thing'

On multiple occasions in the course of a 45-minute interview this week, Peterson told USA TODAY Sports that Bishop Sycamore has existed for four years, only to later say it was actually founded in 2019.

He said he has poured "thousands of dollars" of his own money into the school, and denies that it is a scam.

"If this is a fraud, then I’m the dumbest fraudster ever," he said. "I put money in this. I don’t get money out of it and it was never designed to do that for me. It was always designed to be able to try to help these kids."

Few details exist about Bishop Sycamore, either in the most recent annual report it filed with the state of Ohio or its website, in which the "About Us" and "Staff" sections were blank before the entire site was taken down.

Peterson said tuition at the school costs $2,000 and that the plan prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was to use a "blended learning" environment, where schooling predominantly takes place online as "one of the ways to streamline the cost of what we do." He said there are no full-time teachers, but coaches and other adults hang around the students to make sure work gets done.

He also said the student body consists of between 75 and 80 students, about 95% of whom play sports. In its most recent annual report filed with the state, for the 2020-21 academic year, Bishop Sycamore reported a total enrollment of three.

It has until Sept. 30 to file its annual report for 2021-22.

"They are doing the same thing that they did (at) COF," former COF Academy player Ar'mon Mackey wrote in a Twitter direct message to USA TODAY Sports on Tuesday.

"They lied to me and screwed me over. When I (saw) the Bishop Sycamore stuff, I was telling players that it’s not legit, but they didn’t listen to me."

What's next?

The future of Bishop Sycamore – and its one-time head coach – is now unclear.

Johnson has an active warrant out for his arrest stemming from a 2020 domestic violence incident, Delaware County (Ohio) Sherriff's Office director of public relations Tracy Whited confirmed to USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday. According to court records, Johnson's girlfriend told police that he pushed her and hit her in the lip. Johnson denied touching her but spent three days in jail.

USA TODAY Sports does not name victims of domestic assault without their permission.

Johnson later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, criminal mischief, and was placed on probation. A warrant was issued for his arrest on July 2 after he failed to meet some of the conditions of his probation, according to court records.

As for Bishop Sycamore, at least four schools had pulled out of their scheduled games against the school as of Tuesday evening, some citing concerns over liability or safety. And the department of education investigation that Gov. DeWine announced Tuesday is likely to uncover more details about the nature of Bishop Sycamore's educational offerings. 

The Canton Police Department also said Wednesday it had received a report of two invalid checks totaling $3,596 at a hotel where the team rented 25 rooms last week. It has identified two suspects in the case, according to The Canton Repository.

"You hear their story, you go, ‘OK, all right, it sounds like you want to do good,' " said Ray Holtzclaw, whose son, Judah, briefly played for Bishop Sycamore. "Then the example they set for the kids is, ‘OK, we’re not going to pay our bill. We’re just going to walk away and get somewhere else.’ You can’t keep doing that with kids that are watching you."

Holtzclaw said he was left on the hook for a four-figure hotel bill earlier this year, which Bishop Sycamore promised to reimburse and never did.

Meanwhile, in March, a new lawsuit hit the docket in Franklin County, filed against Johnson and Peterson. A transportation company alleges the two men hired buses from the past year on behalf of a charity called "ISE Foundation," which does not exist as a legal entity in Ohio.

The company, Cardinal Transportation, claims Johnson and Peterson now owe it roughly $13,000. The bill, at least according to court records, has yet to be paid.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on Twitter @Tom_Schad. Follow Chris Bumbaca and Lorenzo Reyes at @BOOMbaca and @LorenzoGReyes.

 

 

 

Wow.