More athletes join class action lawsuit | News, Sports, Jobs

DES MOINES – Ten more Iowa and Iowa State student-athletes and an Iowa basketball equipment manager caught up in a 2023 state gambling crackdown joined a civil lawsuit Tuesday seeking unspecified financial damages from the state and its public safety and law enforcement agencies for violating the athletes' rights and damaging their reputations.

A federal judge 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 former or current Iowa and ISU athletes.

Texas-based attorneys Grant Gerleman and James Roberts, as well as Iowa-based Chris Sandy, represent the 11 who joined the lawsuit, bringing the number of plaintiffs to 37.

“Matt Boles and I are extremely excited to join forces with them because, as the old saying goes, unity is strength,” Plumb said.

Most of the athletes who faced criminal charges in connection with the 2023 investigation agreed to plead guilty to gambling while underage and pay a fine in exchange for the identity theft charge being dropped.

But Iowa State football players Isaiah Lee, Jirehl Brock and Enyi Uwazurike and wrestler Paniro Johnson refused to take a deal, and in March all charges against them were dropped after detectives at ISU athletic facilities found they had misused tracking software that detected mobile betting apps open on cell phones.

The civil lawsuit alleges that the investigators' inappropriate conduct violated the athletes' rights under the Fourth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and caused them pain, suffering, mental anguish, humiliation and damage to their personal reputations.

The lawsuit specifically alleges that the investigators violated their constitutional right to protection from searches and unjustified seizures without a warrant. In addition, they were not adequately trained by the state, particularly in the correct use of the tracking software Kibana from the Canadian company GeoComply.

It is against the rules for athletes to bet on NCAA-sponsored sports. Most of the athletes involved had registered their mobile betting accounts under a different name, usually that of a relative, to avoid detection.

The investigation resulted in the loss of NCAA eligibility and 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 and field athlete Cameron “Cam” Jones, Iowa wrestlers Brennan Swafford and Corey Cabanban, and Iowa basketball equipment manager Evan Schuster.