Sports Officiating Consulting, LLC

The NBA, in announcing its restart plan for the 2019-20 season, did not specifically refer to it as a compliance program, notwithstanding it has  many of the essential elements of an effective compliance and ethics program. However, the plan is limited in scope – its...

While sports officials have not been formally designated “essential workers” during the COVID-19 pandemic, they certainly remain essential to all sports organizations now in the process of reorganizing to resume play. Of course, without sports officials, the games cann...

No country in the world has the array of sports available to the public as does the United States. Whether one is an actual participant or just an avid enthusiast, there is much to choose from in this country. Sports in the United States are further characterized by a...

According to a recent report in the New York Times (the “Times”), after years of investigations and indictments, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) handed down an indictment on April 6, 2020, charging representatives working for Russia and Qatar with bribi...

Washington Post writer Matt Bonesteel reports that, according to charging documents, more than two dozen horse racing industry employees have been charged with participating in a widespread, corrupt doping scheme, the latest black eye for the troubled sport. Racehorse...

At first blush, trying to find something positive about the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal is like the proverbial “finding a needle in a haystack.” However, after considering all the associated events of the past few months, one silver lining is the response by...

After receiving Major League Baseball’s (MLB) blockbuster report on the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, team owner and chairman, Jim Crane, announced at a press conference on January 13 that he had fired general manager (GM) Jeff Luhnow and field manager A.J. Hi...

Historically, the main focus of health care fraud investigations in the U.S. has been on  insurance, drug and medical fraud – mostly in governmental health care programs such as Medicare (federal) and Medicaid (state). The FBI estimates that health care fraud in the U....

Following a recent meeting of the National Hockey League (NHL) Board of Governors, League Commissioner Gary Bettman announced new steps are being taken to combat “inappropriate, unlawful, or demonstrably abusive” behavior in the sport.  This announcement came in the wa...

While past major scandals involving Major League Baseball (MLB) have centered on the steroids era (late 80s – late 2000s), testing for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) has largely stemmed the tide of drug abuse in the sport.   Further, sluggers of the era including J...