Tom Penders speaks about David Salinas

Late Sunday night, Jeff Goodman and Gary Parrish broke the news that David Salinas, the head of the Houston Select AAU program, had committed suicide as he was being investigated by the SEC for running a possible Ponzi Scheme.

The reason us college hoops fans have reason to be interested is that Salinas, who was also an investment advisor, had money coming in from coaches all over the midwest. The coaches that have been confirmed to have invested with Salinas also landed a number of his former players, which will surely pique the interest of the NCAA.

We went in depth on the background of this story yesterday -- which you can read up on here (if you haven't yet, I strongly suggest you click on that link).

Today, we have another hit to the credibility of Salinas' investment company, via Dan Wolken:

Tom Penders said yesterday that in 2004 he told David Salinas, a financial advisor and Houston-area AAU coach whose suicide rocked college basketball last weekend, that he couldn’t invest money with him because it could constitute an NCAA violation.

"He talked about all these coaches that he had investing with him," the former University of Houston coach told The Daily last night. "I told him because he was an AAU guy, I couldn’t possibly get involved in that. I said, 'I think that’s kind of a rules violation, or could be.'"

...

Penders, now retired, told The Daily that Salinas solicited him for a $100,000 investment in their first meeting and "made a strong, strong implication" that it would help Houston gain access to prospects that were part of the Houston Select, an AAU program that Salinas founded. (Emphasis added by us.)

Penders is now the second coach -- although the first to go on record -- to publicly say that Salinas offered him with an investment opportunity in exchange for access to recruits. There is no way that this is going to turn out well for the coaches that have been -- and that will be -- implicated in this mess.