Many of you remember the saga of Guerdwich Montimere, the 22-year old who was caught pretending to be a 16-year old while becoming a Texas high school basketball star last year. Earlier today Montimere, who had claimed to be an orphan from Haiti when he first moved to Texas, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault and three counts of tampering with government records and was sentenced to three years in prison (technically he received three years for each count to served concurrently, which basically means that he just serves three years for each count at the same time). Montimere’s case captured the nation’s attention last year as a bizarre mix of strange nostalgia (a former high school athlete trying to recapture his high school glory days) and seediness (dating and having sex with high school girls) with a little bit of Texas lore mixed in (Montimere was attending Odessa Permian High, the school that Friday Nights Lights is based on).

Not your average 16 year-old

Montimere made the move to Texas in 2009 with the help of a high school teammate and assumed the name Jerry Joseph before eventually moving in with his high school coach, who had been told that Montimere was an orphan from Haiti. Montimere immediately made an impact on the basketball team and was named the District 2-5A Newcomer of the Year. Unfortunately for Montimere, his success also meant that he was offered opportunities to play on a bigger stage. When he traveled with his AAU team to a tournament in Arkansas several of the coaches from Florida recognized him as Montimere, who had graduated from Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2009, which led to several anonymous tips to Permian officials. The first time Permian officials contacted immigration authorities Montimere was cleared, but a subsequent investigation revealed his true identity and Montimere confessed that he was, in fact, not Jerry Joseph.

The charges that Montimere faced were essentially having sex with another high school student and falsifying immigration documents. Surprisingly, despite being duped on such a grand scale, Montimere still had supporters within the Permian teaching department including at least one who still refers to him as a “kid”. GQ recently interviewed Montimere and those involved with the case. One of the more interesting nuggets is that Montimere’s coach claims that Texas Tech was ready to offer Montimere a scholarship. Fortunately, for the Red Raiders that offer never came and the hoax was discovered well before he ever set foot in Lubbock. We suspect that this is the last we will hear of Montimere although we don’t think this is the last time his name will be whispered around AAU circles when a younger player looks a little too physically mature for his age.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 7:56 pm by nvr1983 and is filed under legal matters. Tagged: guerdwich montimere, texas tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.