CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Eric Leak's tangerine jumpsuit was the only splash of color in Room No. 1-1 of the U.S. District Court for the Western Division of North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon in Charlotte.
Leak, a former N.C. State football player who has been in legal trouble and connected to NCAA troubles for N.C. State for almost a decade, was led into the beige court room shortly after 2 p.m.
Leak, 41, had already pleaded guilty to bribing college athletes and conspiracy to commit promotional money laundering in March. He is also serving an 18-month sentence from a separate federal case for Medicaid fraud.
He was expected to be sentenced Wednesday but Judge Robert J. Conrad made the unusual decision to extend the case for at least another month. Conrad, in his remarks during court, described his decision as "somewhat of an ambush" for both federal prosecutor Daniel Ryan and Leak's legal team of Kearns Davis and Edwin West.
But Conrad questioned the validity of the conspiracy portion of the charges against Leak and whether Leak's payments to unidentified athletes constituted a federal crime. Conrad apologized for adding a delay to the case but said he wanted to make sure it was "resolved in a way that has the best chance of getting it right."
According to the court documents, Leak provided between $50,000 and $75,000 to college athletes between 2012-15. He used money from his sports management services company, Hot Shots, to pay for "shoes, clothes, transportation, gas, loans, food and entertainment, hotel rooms, the use of vehicles" to an unspecified number of college football and basketball players in the hopes that they would sign with Leak's company once they reached either the NFL or NBA.
Conrad decided to give the prosecutor an additional three weeks to make their argument and an additional seven days to Leak's legal team to respond. He did not set a date for the next hearing. Davis declined to comment after he left the courtroom. Ryan was not available for comment.
