This wasn’t Jim Donnan’s chosen element. He couldn’t look up at the scoreboard and see whether he was winning. There wasn’t a game clock telling him how much time was left. The opponent wasn’t Florida or Auburn or Tennessee, but the entire non-football-relevant United States of America.
Coaching for five seasons in the SEC is easily trivialized when the real-world SEC brings fraud charges in 2012 and the U.S. attorney follows with a 41-point indictment accusing you of orchestrating an $80 million Ponzi scheme.
James M. Donnan, defendant, never won this big on a football field.
He went 40-19 as Georgia’s coach. He went 41-0 in U.S. District Court on Friday, about a mile from Sanford Stadium. A jury found him not guilty on 41 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.
“I feel vindicated,” Donnan said later. “Now I hope I can get my life back.”
The 69-year-old was one guilty verdict away on just a single felony count from spending potentially several years in a prison cell. It wasn’t until after U.S. District Judge C. Ashley Royal thumbed through several pages of verdicts given to him from the jury and said, “I see on each count, the jury has checked not guilty,” could Donnan see daylight.
He turned from his chair in the courtroom and smiled at family and friends. When the judge dismissed the parties, he hugged his attorneys, Ed Tolley and Jerry Froelich, then walked to the back of the room to hug his wife, Mary, and other family members.
The tough blue-collar coach acquitted of white-collar crimes seemed to fight back tears. But it wasn’t until later that Donnan showed his first real emotion of the trial. Ironically, it came behind a closed door at a clerk’s office for bankruptcy court. Donnan, who is in bankruptcy, ducked into that office, which had been used as an escape for him and family during the trial, shut the door and let out two loud yells that reverberated down the hallway of the courthouse.”
“Relieved,” he said later as he stood in front of Tolley’s office, a few blocks from the courthouse. “It was a very tough process from Day 1.”
Prosecutors said Donnan used his influence and friendships to lure former players, college coaches and others into investing big in GLC Limited, a company run by Gregory Crabtree and Donnan. Investors believed they were buying into a wholesale warehouse business that bought and sold random merchandise for profit, from pottery to Pyrex to flat-screen TVs.
If that was the intent at the outset, it morphed into a Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said. Investors were paid with other investors’ money. Eventually, the scheme collapsed. The prosecution said investors lost $22.9 million and claimed Donnan pulled $8.4 million in profits out of the deal.
There was some painful testimony. Jonas Jennings, who played for Donnan at Georgia, testified that he phoned his former coach in 2009 for advice on getting into coaching after he retired from the NFL, but Donnan steered him toward investing instead, leading to a half-million dollars in losses. “He just told me that he had a better opportunity that would put me on Easy Street,” Jennings said.
Kendrell Bell, another former player, said Donnan told him, “Coach is going to take care of you.” But Bell lost $2 million (later recovering about half that through legal proceedings).
Seemingly damaging testimony came from Dr. David Allen, a Donnan family friend, who claimed losses of $1 million. Allen said he previously told Donnan that the money was his retirement nest egg, not meant for investment. “But I heard back from him, and he seemed distraught. He told me he was in a situation that could affect his family and affect Mary, his wife. I subsequently invested it with him.”
But the defense painted Donnan as a gullible bumpkin. They said Crabtree, who took a plea deal and testified for the prosecution, was the mastermind of the scheme.
“It’s not a crime to not be very smart,” Tolley said in his closing argument.
He reiterated that after the verdict, saying, “There’s a fine line between people making a mistake and a crime.”
Prosecutor G.F. “Pete” Peterman tried to get jurors to connect the dots in his closing. He tried to show how Donnan quit putting his own money into GLC, while still recruiting other investors, when he sensed a collapse. He said sarcastically, “The mastermind (Crabtree) has $1.6 million (in profits) to his credit and the mere dumb lackey (Donnan) and his family got well over $10 million? Does that make any sense at all?”
They were powerful words and a logical argument. But the jury sided with Donnan.
“I just didn’t think there was enough evidence to support all of the charges,” said Artis Ricks, the jury foreman. “I just never saw any smoking gun that proved guilt.
“I think Mr. Donnan was as big a victim in this as some of the investors who lost their money.”
Donnan’s financial problems remains. It’s conceivable there could be more civil litigation. But prison isn’t a concern.
“I feel like when I did find out what was going on, all I ever tried to do was rectify a terrible situation for everybody,” he said.
The money is long gone. But Donnan was found guilty only of being duped.
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