Guerdwich Montimere and the Biggest Scammers in Sports History

Permian High School hoopster Jerry Joseph played like a man among boys.

Turns out that good ol' sports cliche proved to be true.

Police said Tuesday that the Permian star is really Guerdwich Montimere (pictured at right), a 22-year-old naturalized citizen from Haiti who school officials said was recognized at a high school hoops showcase last month.

Guerdmire originally enrolled in town in 2009, telling Permian coach Danny Wright that he was homeless. He must have seen "The Blind Side".

Wright housed Guerdmire and reaped the benefits of his good Samaritan acts on the court this past year.

Guerdmire was actually a star player in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. a few years ago.

The news means Permian likely will have to forfeit the 2009 basketball season in which the 6-foot-5 player "Jerry Joseph" earned numerous newcomer of the year awards and led the team to the District 2-5A state playoffs.

Montimere was arrested at school Tuesday and booked into Ector County jail on a charge of presenting false identification to a police officer.

Joseph is just the latest in a string of athletes and sports-adjacent frauds trying to put one over on fans.

Kevin Hart

The 6-foot-5, 290-pound football player from Fernley (Wash.) High School took full advantage of the national signing day hype two years ago.

He held a press conference and had the school and the recruiting experts believing he was about to become the first-ever Division I college athlete from the town.

He had hats from Oregon and Cal on the table in front of him, reached for the Cal hat and said he'd accepted their full ride offer. He even had fake letters of intent in front of him to sign.

Yeah, not so much. When reporters called to check on Hart's status, neither school had even heard of him. The other schools he mentioned were in the mix, Oklahoma State and Illinois, were called and never heard of him either.

"Strangest thing I've ever heard," said Dave Williford, an Oregon athletic spokesman.

"To have this high school, which has never had a Division I athlete and now it's not real? It's too bad. It's disappointing," said Fernley Mayor Todd Cutler.

Danny Almonte

He was an untouchable lefty pitcher in the 2001 World Series. It was the feel-good story as the underdog from the financial ruins of The Bronx finished third in the Series behind Danny Almonte.

The supposed 12-year-old was literally given the keys to the city by then mayor Rudy Guiliani.

Then we learned that Almonte was actually two years too old to play. The allegations were running wild during the Series -- he was just too big and powerful to be 12.

Nothing could be proven until two weeks after the Series. The team was stripped of its medals.

Almonte continued to pitch and has been playing semi-pro baseball.

In 2006, the then-19-year-old admitted he was married to a 30-year-old woman.

Rosie Ruiz

The Cuban American crossed the finish line of the 1980 Boston Marathon in record time.

She shattered records actually with a time of 2:31:56, more than 25 minutes better than her New York Marathon time a few months before.

The media attention wasn't quite so intense back then, but reporters couldn't make sense of how Ruiz was off the radar for a while then suddenly winning the race.

"I just woke up with a lot of energy this morning," Ruiz told the media.

A lot of energy to pull off a scam, that's for sure. It was later determined that Ruiz jumped out of the field, hopped a subway and jumped back into the field to sprint to the finish.

Further investigation proved that she barely ran any of the New York marathon, pulling the subway rouse there as well and identifying herself in the finish area as an injured runner.

Boston officials learned from the incident, instituting video surveillance along the course which later led to microchip tracking that helped catch ...

The 2000 Berlin Marathon Cheaters

Thirty-three runners in Berlin attempted to pull off the same trick, perhaps as a 20th anniversary celebration of Ruiz.

They got on the subway at the 15-mile mark and jumped back into the field with under a mile to go.

The computer chips showed some irregular blips in the GPS. The runners soon copped to the stunt and were disqualified.

Olympic Swimmers Full of Air

These pesky Germans just can't help but try to enhance the results by any means necessary ...

... even if it means making your butt highly volatile.

Olympic officials discovered that German swimmers had 1.8 liters of air pumped into the tookuses in an attempt to make them glide through the water easier.

The front swimmers and backstroke swimmers showed improvement but the breaststrokers said it made their feet stick out of the water.

What, did they fill them with helium?

Jerry Joseph

Joseph, aka Montimere, graduated from Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale in 2007.

"I feel like I was hit by a ton of bricks," district athletic director Leon Fuller said. "In my 50 years in education, I've never heard of anything like this."

His coach told The Odessa American that the player was like a family member.

"This affected a lot of people. The whole school of Permian embraced that kid. He deceived us and played on everyone's emotions," Wright said.

Montimere was being held on $500 bond Tuesday night, according to jail records. Jail officials said no attorney was listed for Montimere.

If convicted of the misdemeanor, Montimere could face up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

"I feel sick, but now that we've gotten the truth we can move on from here," Permian principal Roy Garcia said.

Permian High School's football program was made famous by the Buzz Bissinger book and subsequent movie and TV series "Friday Night Lights".

There is already concerns at the school that he may have dated underage girls posing as a 16-year-old. If that's proven true, Montimere will face felony charges and a much longer jail stay.

Stella the Fella

Police got more than they bargained for when they found a woman shot and killed outside a Cleveland shopping mall in 1980.

It was revealed to be 69-year-old National Track and Field Hall of Famer Stella Walsh.

The story made national headlines. Walsh was a big deal in the 1930s, the best athlete of her time and a 1932 gold medal winner for Poland. She went on to take silver in 1936 and set 20 world records.

When authorities did an autopsy, they discovered Walsh had both male and female genitalia. She had both male and female chromosomes, a condition called mosaicism.

Twenty-nine years later, South African track star Caster Semenya was proven to have the same condition.

Sidd Finch

Rather than reporting on it, Sports Illustrated actually perpetrated one of the most infamous scams in sports.

Their April 1, 1985 issue told the story of Sidd Finch, an English orphan raised by an archaeologist, educated at Harvard and trained by a yogi in Tibet.

Finch supposedly showed up at a Mets training camp in Florida and threw an off-the-charts 168 mph, even pitching with one barefoot and the other in a large hiking boot.

They had a photo shoot and everything. George Plimpton's words made readers instantly fall for Finch. The magazine received 2,000 letters asking for an update or how they could help Finch.

Two weeks later, the magazine fessed up to their hoax.

The truth could be found in Plimpton's subhead for the story: “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent lifestyle, Sidd’s deciding about yoga …”

The first letter of each word spells out “happyaprilfoolsday.”

Paul Tormanen

He was a rising star on the bass fishing circuit, the kind of guy that appeared to be a magnet to the fish. He'd catch his limit within the first hour of the contest opening.

The trouble comes with Tormanen's definition of catch.

In 2005, the Missouri native admitted to felony contest fraud in Louisiana.

Tormanen admitted that he’d catch his fish beforehand, take them out on the lake and tie them to stumps. His method earned him a win in the 2005 Red River Bassmaster Central Open in Louisiana, where he scored a new fishing boat and $10,000 cash.

He had to give it all back when one of the competitors found one of the ringers during a practice round.

Tormanen earned a lifetime ban from B.A.S.S. contests, a six-month suspended sentence, a fine, 120 hours of community service and two years probation.

The Pam Scammers

We've heard of greasing up the baseball, but lubing your jersey?

Four defensive linemen on the Sacramento State Hornets sprayed the non-stick cooking spray Pam on their jersey before a 2002 game.

They thought the idea would allow them to slip through the Montana offensive line.

Not only did the idea fall flat, but photographers snapped shots of them spraying themselves on the sidelines.

Sacamento State lost the game anyway.

All was not lost though. The boys reportedly cooked some nice clean omelets on themselves after the game.

In November 2002, four defensive linemen with the Sacramento State Hornets football team sprayed the non-stick cooking spray, PAM, onto their jerseys during a game against Montana. The linemen thought this scam would allow them to slip past Montana's offensive line. The plan never worked. Not only did Sacramento lose the football game, the cheating linemen also got busted after a photographer took a picture of the players spraying themselves with PAM on the sidelines.