NCAA interviews woman at center of UNC academic fraud investigation

The NCAA met with a woman who is at the center of the University of North Carolina's decades long academic scandal after previously refusing to cooperate in the investigation, reports InsideCarolina.com.

Deborah Crowder met with NCAA investigators on Wednesday with NCAA enforcement officials and school representatives also in attendance during the interview.

“Ms. Crowder’s interview went quite well," Crowder's lawyer, Elliot Abrams, said. "She was pleased to have an opportunity to confront her accusers and respond to their unfounded allegations.”

North Carolina has been under investigation at one time or another since 2010, when the NCAA started looking into academic fraud concerning as many as 3,100 athletes in various sports over a two-decade period.

North Carolina faces five top-level charges, including lack of institutional control, and athletes receiving "preferential access" to African and Afro-American Studies classes. Crowder was a former office administrator in the AFAM department and now is retired.

Since sending North Carolina a Notice of Allegations in May 2015, the NCAA has revised it twice, with a third version of the notice coming last December with Crowder being named specifically in that notice.

The NCAA has said that Crowder "committed extra benefit and ethical conduct violations from 2002-11 by overseeing anomalous courses in the department and giving athletics personnel authority to impact aspects of the courses for student-athletes."

The response to the amended notice of allegations are due on May 16.

- Scooby Axson