Several college basketball referees, including one prominent Big Ten official has been sanctioned as they have accessed unauthorized information on a refereeing software website.
Sources say that log-in information to BlueZebraSports.com was compromised and passed on to several officials. The website is an officiating website whose clientele includes many of the Division I college basketball conferences.
The officials have the ability to access secure information such as game schedules and compensation of other officials.
Bo Boroski will not work any game assignments in the league this season because of the violations, sources told ESPN.com. He officiated the NCAA tournament this past season as well as did the Big Ten tournament semifinals each of the past two years.
According to one of the big ten officials "He's one of the best guys in our league."
The statement of the organization reads:
"The Collegiate Officiating Consortium (COC) was informed last week that the basketball officiating website utilized by the consortium and administered by a vendor was compromised by individuals affiliated with the consortium to gain unauthorized access to restricted areas."
"The COC is an officiating consortium comprised of the Big Ten Conference, Mid-American Conference, Summit League and Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference in men's basketball and a consortium consisting of the Big Ten, Mid-American, Summit, Big 12 Conference, Conference USA, Horizon League, Missouri Valley Conference and Great Lakes Valley Conference in women's basketball."
"The conferences and schools have been notified of the security breach, the access issues have been corrected by the vendor and disciplinary action has been taken by the consortium against the individuals involved. The integrity of the officiating program is paramount, and we appreciate the cooperation of all involved throughout the process."
One of the referees involved commented "It was stupid. It fell in our lap, but it wasn't with ill intent. We're not computer hackers. We're kicking ourselves why we did it, but it fell in our lap."
While another referee, Martin Cota, vehemently denied the allegations. He said "My lawyer told me not to discuss the details. But I'm going to fight it. I didn't do anything wrong."
Bradley Batt, the owner of BlueZebra Sports also sent out a statement to his clients saying "They manipulated our system in a malicious manner to gain access to the sites of coordinators for whom they worked. We did not expect to have to guard against malicious behavior of our own clients who were also coordinators of other conferences."
"Our next step was to contact the coordinators and conferences whose information was improperly accessed. We provided them reports with full disclosure of what happened and what was accessed. In addition, we terminated our agreements with both clients who abused the system to access information in an unauthorized manner."
