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Fla. coaches believe teen is really 22.....BUSTED

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KFDM COOP

KFDM COOP

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Fla. coaches believe teen is really 22

   

Jerry Joseph is a 16-year-old star high school basketball player in Odessa, Texas. U.S. Immigration officials say he's in the country illegally. And some coaches from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., believe he's a former player who starred in South Florida and is actually 22.

The 6-foot-5 Joseph, who plays for Permian High School in Odessa, has faced allegations that he is really Guerdwich Montimere, who starred at Fort Lauderdale's Dillard High School and graduated in 2007.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have determined that Joseph is not Montimere, but that Joseph, from Haiti, is in the country illegally.

Joseph has been allowed to stay enrolled at Permian and play basketball, however. His coach, Danny Wright, has been made his legal guardian until a hearing is held to determine Joseph's status. Joseph had been staying with Wright's family since the end of the last school year, even before the controversy. A date hasn't been set yet for the hearing.

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa told USA Today that investigators used the FBI database and determined through fingerprint analysis that Joseph wasn't Montimere.

Cedric Smith and Louis Vives, coaches for the South Florida Elite AAU team, saw Joseph last month at an AAU tournament in Arkansas and are convinced that Joseph is Montimere.

"I'm 100 percent sure. I would bet my paycheck," Smith told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

"We saw him. We've known Guerdwich since he was in seventh or eighth grade. The mannerisms were him. It doesn't make sense. They have to do more investigations for me," Smith told the newspaper.

Joseph denied that he was Montimere when he talked with Vives at the tournament.

"It was shocking, and the question at hand was just why," Vives told USA Today. "When I approached him, I just wanted to know what was going on. The surprised look on his face gave it away that it was him. ... Once he saw a Florida team and players and coaches who knew him, the look on his face was like, 'Wow, what am I into now?' "

Permian principal Roy Garcia told the Sun-Sentinel that his school contacted Dillard in its investigation.

"Any time we get an accusation that serious, we have to check it out," Garcia told the Odessa American. "If the allegations are true, that means a 22-year-old is walking around the halls with high school kids."

The Odessa American reported that Joseph was enrolled at Permian by Jabari Caldwell, who was a teammate of Montimere's at Dillard. According to the newspaper, Caldwell signed an affidavit that Joseph was his half-brother.

However, Wright's wife, Jamie, told the Odessa American that Joseph phoned her last week and said he wasn't related to Caldwell.

Caldwell told the Odessa American that he helped Joseph enroll at Permian as a favor to a friend he used to play with in Fort Lauderdale. Joseph, whose Haitian birth certificate says he was born on Jan. 1, 1994, was homeless in Fort Myers, Fla., after fleeing a hurricane in Haiti in 2008, the newspaper reported.

"He asked me if it was possible for me to help him enroll in school," Caldwell told the Odessa American. "I met him in Odessa. He came out here on a Greyhound."

Caldwell, who had been playing at the University of Texas-Permian Basin, left Texas for Florida when his coach left for another job. Joseph wanted to stay in Texas and asked Wright if he could stay with the coach.

Wright told the Odessa American that he hopes to adopt Joseph.

"I don't think there was a loser in this thing at all," Wright told the newspaper. "When this broke, there was a panic to do the right thing. I think everyone was trying to do their job to the best of their ability."

Joseph has declined to comment when contacted by media outlets.
Spanky

Spanky

Posted
Posted
[quote name="scooter!" post="799592" timestamp="1273354134"]
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/highschool/basketball/browardboys/fl-jerry-joseph-0507-20100506,0,5566621.story

focus on the ears and the hairline
[/quote]

sure looks like it might be the same man!
baddog

baddog

Posted
Posted
I heard that since he was parading as a 16 year old, he had an affair with a 15 year old girl. Morally wrong, but not illegal if he was really 16.....oops!

Add-on.....in today's PA News, he is facing sexual assault charges for having a relationship with a 15 year old girl. He's been arrested 3 times in the past 4 days.
  • 4 weeks later...
OldSkool97

OldSkool97

Posted
Posted
[b]5 Felony Accounts[/b]

An Ector County, Texas grand jury indicted Guerdwich Montimere, a 22-year-old man accused of posing as a high school student and basketball star in West Texas, on five felony counts on Monday.

The grand jury returned two indictments against Montimere. The first contained two counts of sexual assault of a child.

Montimere was arrested on May 14 after a 16-year-old girl in Odessa told police and school district officials she had sex with him at a home in August when she thought he was 15-year-old Jerry Joseph.

The second indictment contained two counts of tampering with governmental records and one count of fraudulent use of identifying information.

Indicted for those same offenses was former teammate Jabari Caldwell as a party.

Montimere was originally arrested May 11 on a misdemeanor charge of failure to identify himself to a police officer, and school officials said he admitted that he wasn't Joseph. May 13, Montimere was released on $7,500 bond about five hours after his arrest on a felony charge of tampering with government documents.

Officials said Montimere enrolled at a junior high school and later at Permian High School last year with a fake birth certificate from Haiti. The Odessa American reported in May that Montimere was enrolled at Permian by Caldwell, who was a teammate of Montimere's at Dillard High School in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. According to the newspaper, Caldwell signed an affidavit that "Jerry Joseph" was his half-brother. Suspicions were raised after coaches at an amateur basketball tournament said they recognized Joseph as Montimere, a 2007 graduate of Dillard and a naturalized U.S. citizen from Haiti.

Caldwell, who had been playing at the University of Texas-Permian Basin, told the Odessa American that he helped Montimere enroll at Permian as a favor. Montimere, whose Haitian birth certificate says he was born on Jan. 1, 1994, was homeless in Fort Myers, Fla., after fleeing a hurricane in Haiti in 2008, the newspaper reported.

"He asked me if it was possible for me to help him enroll in school," Caldwell told the Odessa American in May. "I met him in Odessa. He came out here on a Greyhound."

Permian High School made the state basketball playoffs with Montimere helping lead the way as a sophomore star. Questions arose after the season, and Montimere was initially cleared by immigration authorities and allowed to return to the school.

The investigation continued, and a fingerprint from a passport found in his room matched one taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after the allegations surfaced, according to an affidavit. School officials said Montimere confessed after he was confronted with the new evidence.

Sexual assault of a child is a second-degree felony which carries punishment of two years to 20 years in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Tampering with government records is also a second-degree felony. Fraudulent use of identifying information is a state jail felony and can carry a sentence of six months to two years in a state jail.

The grand jury found no wrong doing on the part of Ector County independent school district, Permian High School, the athletic department, or any persons identified with the above listed agencies.

State District Judge Denn Whalen set an arraignment date of June 16.

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