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Montgomery to be sentenced
16/05/2008 07:39 - (SA)
New York - Onetime 100m world record-holder Tim Montgomery was due to be sentenced in a check-fraud scheme on Friday as his slide from the pinnacle of the sports world continues.
Montgomery, whose reign as the world's fastest man has been expunged from the record books because of a ban for doping, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and two counts of bank fraud in connection with the check scam in April of 2007.
In May of this year, his former coach Steve Riddick was found guilty in federal court of bank fraud and money laundering charges stemming from the scheme, in which Montgomery's agent, Charles Wells, also pleaded guilty.
The fraud case also touched Montgomery's former partner, onetime Olympic darling Marion Jones.
Jones has been jailed after pleading guilty to perjury charges, one charge stemming from lying to investigators about her use of performance enhancing drugs and another to lying about her knowledge of the fraud affair.
Prosecutor Michael J. Garcia said the conspirators procured stolen, altered or counterfeit checks then cashed or attempted to cash them in various ways.
Distribute heroin
Montgomery was to be sentenced in federal court in White Plains, New York, on Friday.
Defence lawyers said Montgomery faces 37 to 46 months in prison. In the meantime, he was already in jail in Virginia after he was arrested on April 30 and charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin.
Montgomery faces a trial on those changes in July.
Montgomery's 2005 ban from athletics, based upon evidence linking him to once-undetectable steroids in the Balco scandal, wiped out his world-record 100m time of 9.78 seconds posted in September of 2002.
Neither he nor Jones, with whom he has a son, ever tested positive.
Montgomery won 2000 Sydney Olympic gold in the 4x100m relay and a silver medal in the same event in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, despite not appearing in the finals of either race.
- AFP
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