A former Auburn football staffer is facing serious charges after prosecutors say he stole recruiting evaluations and passed them along to other schools.
Police arrested 24-year-old David Jenrath on Monday in Auburn, Alabama, and he was still being held in custody Tuesday. The charges are theft of trade secrets and computer tampering.
According to ESPN, Jenrath allegedly took Auburn’s recruiting evaluations on July 19 and sent the material to other schools. In one case, he reportedly identified himself as “Don Julio.”
The charging documents say Jenrath had “obtained and/or retained confidential, proprietary information consisting of Auburn University Athletics' information, and/or knowingly made a copy or reproduction of Auburn University Athletics' trade secrets and communicate or transmit a secret without the owners' consent.”
The case does not accuse him of sharing Auburn NIL spending or playbooks. But prosecutors believed the material he accessed and transmitted was enough to move forward with charges.
Auburn police said in a Tuesday statement that a “business reported that sensitive information was stolen from the business and distributed to their competitors.”
Jenrath turned himself in Monday, and ESPN reported that he was not a full-time employee at Auburn. His now-deleted LinkedIn page described him as a player personnel scouting assistant for the football program from January through June of this year, with responsibilities focused on running backs and safeties.
Jenrath is originally from Tennessee and attended the University of Tennessee as an undergraduate. It remains unclear whether any of the information was sent to Tennessee’s football program.
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