WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Player's license plates linked to incarcerated dealer

Jun 20, 2011

Raleigh, N.C. — Several license plate numbers provided on a list of former and current UNC football players' parking tickets between March 2007 and August 2010 are linked to a car dealer currently serving time in a federal prison for money laundering. The list was among thousands of documents released Thursday as part of a public records request.

The parking tickets were issued to 12 players and 28 separate license plates.

In the university's database of parking tickets, the citations analyzed trace back to six accounts. Five of those accounts involve multiple plates.

One account, traced back to former UNC wide receiver Greg Little, has seven different tags.

The records show a vehicle registered to the Little family was cited using four different tags only one of which is a valid plate for the vehicle. One of the plates doesn't exist according to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The other two plates are 30 day temporary tags issued by dealers when someone buys a car.

Although by law dealers cannot issue temporary tags to the same vehicle for consecutive months, the parking records show Little's vehicle bore temporary tags for the months of March and April 2009.

Both of the 30-day tags trace back to 919 Imports in Durham, according to the DMV.

That auto dealer has since closed and business owner, Shawn E. Brown, is serving a federal sentence for money laundering.

Between March 9 and April 29, 2009 Little's Dodge was issued 16 parking violations under three separate license plates. The car was cited three days in a row from March 30 to April 2, and each time had a different plate. On April 13, the car was cited twice, with two different plate numbers.

Little's father told WRAL News Thursday there is no reason the car should have had multiple plates.

The other car with a temporary tag had no such discrepancies. A temporary tag issued by a Fayetteville dealership for a 2005 gray Nissan Altima was found to be valid. The parking citations associated with this account, six citations for $185, are paid in full.

University officials said Wednesday they checked all the vehicles as part of an internal investigation and found all were registered to the student, family members, or another student and the reason multiple tags appear in each account is because tickets are issued to vehicles, not people - meaning some players were driving multiple cars during the time frame studied -- March 2007 through August 2010.

Other traffic violations

Another former player, Marvin Austin, was pulled over driving a car that bore a license plate which was registered to another car, one owned by teammate Johnny White.

Records show Austin told the officer he bought the car eight months ago and was still waiting on a plate.

North Carolina Court of Appeals ordered the university to release the parking tickets records to the media as part of the public records request made by WRAL and other media outlets into the school and NCAA investigation into the football program. 

The NCAA has informed the school that it plans to complete its investigation this month.

In all, 14 players missed at least one game in 2010 due to the probe with seven being ruled out for the entire year. An eighth was cleared to return at midseason but decided to redshirt.

 

 

• Reporter: Erin Hartness
• Web Editors: Aaron Schoonmaker, Erin Summers