Louisville Cardinals probe if staffer bought prostitutes for recruits

Louisville said Friday it has launched an investigation into allegations that former Cardinals staffer Andre McGee paid an escort service to provide sex for recruits.

The allegations by Katina Powell are in an upcoming book, "Breaking Cardinal Rules: Basketball and the Escort Queen" from a publishing arm of the Indianapolis Business Journal. Some details of the book were published on the Journal's web site, and said that McGee hired Powell to provide strippers and prostitutes for recruits and some of their fathers during a four-year period.

Louisville issued a statement saying it learned of the allegations in August and immediately notified the NCAA. McGee left Louisville in 2014 to become an assistant at Missouri-Kansas City. The school and McGee could not be immediately reached for comment Friday evening.

"We're an open book. We want to get to the bottom of it," said Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich.

Louisville retained Chuck Smrt of the Compliance Group, which assists schools in NCAA cases, to review the allegations.

The Journal's summary of the book said that Powell brought women to 22 parties from 2010 to 2014 at Billy Minardi Hall, which houses Cardinals basketball players.

The woman said that she and three of her daughters, along with other women, danced and stripped for Louisville recruits and players and performed sex acts with them, according to the book.

McGee played for Louisville from 2005-09 and started 57 games during his career. He played professionally in Europe before becoming a program assistant in 2010 and was promoted to director of basketball operations in 2012.