Players, Parents Say Brooklyn Basketball Coach Ran Off With Team's Travel Money
NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) -- A promising young basketball team has had their dreams dashed because their travel money is gone, and so is their coach.
As CBS2's Steve Langford reported, the talented young basketball players should be in Las Vegas right now, competing in a national playoff.
Instead they're hanging out on the courts at Linden Park in Brooklyn because they, their parents, and other team officials said their coach took their money and ran.
"This is the first time he ever do something like that," Jeremy Moronta said.
Coach Karim Seabrook is gone and so is the $30,000, they said, from a bank account set up for the team of 14-year-olds to go and compete in Vegas.
"When they checked the account they said everything was empty, he took every last dollar," assistant coach, Dimitri Jones said.
Jones and team organizer Shatia Burks said they discovered over the weekend that the coach had moved.
"Frantic calls, text messages being ignored, parents calling me like 'where is he?'" Burks said.
That's when they quickly discovered there was no trip to Vegas.
"The team was never registered for the tournament at all," Burks said.
The worst part was telling the parents and the kids.
"I don't believe in him no more. I don't trust him," Moronta said.
"We don't really know what happened, what motivated him to do it, but we hope he gets caught," activist, Vincent Riggins said.
At Coach Seabrook's home a few blocks away, his apartment is empty.
There is a bitter sense that the youngsters have been robbed in more ways than one.
"It's a lot knowing they could have been out there, been scouted, and looked at," one parent said.
The team should have left for Las Vegas on Tuesday, now their hoop dreams have been dashed.
Team officials said they've been told this is a civil matter, and isn't something that police can deal with.
