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Dear Friends,
A few weeks ago we reported
that
PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association)
Commissioner Troy Ellerman stood accused by a
former associate of leaking secret grand jury
transcripts to two reporters in the BALCO steroid
scandal, the biggest sports scandal in history.
Now “Cowboy” Troy has not only admitted what he did,
he has pled guilty to obstructing justice, contempt
of court and filing a false declaration. The plea
deal will send Ellerman to prison for two years and he
will pay a quarter million dollar fine. Interestingly, if the
presiding judge chooses not to accept the plea deal,
Ellerman could be sentenced to fifteen years and
could be fined two million dollars.
There is a possibility that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey
White will not accept the plea bargain, and we
certainly hope that he will not. Deputy Attorney
General Paul McNulty said Ellerman's behavior was
an "abuse of our system of justice." "Such
gamesmanship undermines the integrity of the legal
system and demands accountability," he said. Even
Victor Conte, one of Ellerman’s former BALCO clients
who was convicted, spoke out against Ellerman in an
email to the Associated Press. "I find the fact that Troy
Ellerman has admitted to leaking the BALCO grand
jury transcripts to be outrageous," wrote Conte. Even
convicted criminals find Troy Ellerman’s conduct to be
abhorrent!
In a 2005 interview, Troy Ellerman pushed
rodeo propaganda hard declaring, “There’s
nothing phony about rodeo. It’s the real deal. If you
walk down the street with a cowboy hat, that’s the
symbol of integrity and hard work.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you Commissioner
Ellerman showing the true corrupt phony cowboy he
is,
leaving a California courthouse last week—This is
rodeo’s REAL deal.
Judge Susan Illston, who presided over the BALCO
case, was furious that someone was leaking
information. Ellerman, along with other principles in
the BALCO case, had signed a promise NOT to
divulge information in the transcripts before receiving
them. Ellerman subsequently violated that pledge.
When the leaked information became public, the
judge had lawyers in the case, including Ellerman,
sign a promise that they were not the source of the
leak. Ellerman then leaked information again.
Incredibly, Ellerman then attempted to have charges
against his client dropped by claiming there
were, “repeated government leaks of confidential
information to the media.”
Troy Ellerman is the perfect poster boy for the rodeo
mafia. He is a narcissist, a cheat, a liar and now, an
admitted criminal. One thing Troy is not, and what no
rodeo thug is, is a real cowboy. Real working
cowboys aren’t running around from rodeo arena to
rodeo arena, they are on ranches doing ranch work.
Rodeo thugs are simply performers in a Western-
theme circus. Instead of wearing a clown costume,
they wear an equally ridiculous John Wayne costume.
They wear ridiculous hats and huge belt buckles
(apparently to compensate for other shortcomings),
surround themselves with the American flag, pray to
God, and then indulge in the only thing that is real in
rodeo – the abuse of animals.
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Lack of Ethics Doesn't Stop at Ellerman
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And what of the PRCA Board of Directors?
Their first
response to an admission of guilt by Ellerman should
have been to fire him—but no. They waited and
waited and finally “accepted” his resignation. A
statement
released by Tom Feller, Chairman of the Board, after
Ellerman was under FBI investigation and caught on
tape making self-damaging comments, shows the
PRCA’s true attitude towards criminal behavior in their
circle:
“The majority of the PRCA Board stands solidly
behind Commissioner Troy Ellerman as he continues
to move the PRCA and the sport of professional rodeo
forward.”
If Troy Ellerman is our choice for poster boy of the
rodeo mafia, then surely PRCA stock contractor Harry
Vold is Ellerman’s lady-in-waiting. Vold has been
busted by SHARK investigators three times – twice at
the American Royal rodeo in Kansas City, Missouri,
(See our investigative video
here.)
and once at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. Last
year, Vold and another stock contractor were
busted again at the Cheyenne Frontier Days
Rodeo. Like Ellerman, Vold is a phony and a
cheat, but the Ellerman scandal shows that Vold has
another trait common to rodeo thugs – he’s a
backbiting backstabber.
Even after the December 2006 media exposure
detailing that
Ellerman was under investigation by the FBI as a likely
source of the leak, Harry Vold continued to praise
Ellerman in his best brown-nosing style. An interview
with
Yahoo Sports points out Vold’s support for his pal
Troy:
“Harry Vold, a longtime and well-regarded
stock
contractor, dismissed criticism of Ellerman.
Vold pointed out that Ellerman took over the PRCA
when it was reportedly $3.6 million in debt and has
since stabilized the organization's finances.
"Whether a lot of people are happy or not, it's pretty
hard to find a person that is going to satisfy everyone,"
Vold said. "As far as I'm concerned, he's doing the
best job he possibly can, and I'm not going to criticize
what he's doing."
Now two months and a guilty plea later, Harry Vold
has no problem with criticism of Ellerman’s PRCA
leadership and has taken the media opportunities to
voice his disapproval, as in this
article from February 20, 2007:
"He was dead wrong," said Harry Vold, a
member of the Hall of Champions board. "They didn't
even own the Hall of Champions and never consulted
our board. They made a deal without any
authority."
[referring to Ellerman’s deal with New Mexico to move
rodeo’s “Hall of Champions” out of Colorado]
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So when Harry “Backstabber” Vold thinks that
Ellerman might survive his legal issues and remain
head of the PRCA, Harry talks nice about Ellerman.
As soon as it becomes clear that Ellerman is going
down, the old Backstabber launches attacks against
Cowboy Troy.
This is far from the first time that there has been
backstabbing in the PRCA, and Harry Vold is neither
the first nor the last of the lowlifes involved. When the
PRCA’s last commissioner, Steven Hatchell was in
power, everyone kissed his butt as well. When he
resigned, out came the long knives, and Hatchell was
properly rhetorically drawn and quartered. Then it was
Cowboy Troy who was going to save the PRCA.
Now that the head of the rodeo world is an
admitted
liar, underhanded schemer, and headed for federal
prison, where’s the condemnation from the “honest,
down-to-earth cowboys” that supposedly are the
backbone of rodeo? A check of the major online
rodeo discussion boards and forums finds mostly
glowing compliments of Ellerman and unending
praise about how “he saved the PRCA from financial
distress”. The reality is that Troy Ellerman got the
PRCA out of debt by selling off nearly every asset
the
PRCA owned. Anyone could have done that. Yes,
Ellerman got the PRCA out of the red-- by effectively
cutting and selling arms and legs off of the
organization and shrinking the PRCA itself. And rodeo
is going to circle their wagons to protect this?
Rodeo, and the people involved, are what they are – a
cruelty joke. Their utter lack of character guarantees
that not even the corporate jerks
that sponsor them can give them the public
acceptance they so desperately crave. Neither rodeo
thugs nor their corporate sponsors have any morals,
integrity, conscience, ethics, or any other redeeming
quality that we can detect.
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