Ex-Auburn staffer charged with stealing recruiting secrets, sending them to rivals

A former Auburn football staff member turned himself in Monday on felony charges that he stole recruiting information from the Tigers and sent it to competing schools.

David Rudolph Jenrath, 24, was charged with theft of trade secrets and computer tampering, according to court records. He is being held on $15,000 bond at the Lee County Jail in Auburn, Alabama.

Auburn police said in a news release Tuesday that a business reported sensitive information was stolen and distributed to competitors. One competitor received the material and turned it over to the business, according to the release.

Police did not name the schools that allegedly received the information. A complaint alleges the incident occurred July 19 at the Auburn Athletics Complex.

Auburn officials declined to comment Tuesday.

Sources told ESPN that Jenrath allegedly sent material tied to Auburn's recruiting evaluations to multiple schools. The information did not include Auburn's name, image and likeness deals, revenue sharing distributions, or playbooks, the sources said.

Jenrath, who is from Franklin, Tennessee, was not a full-time member of the Auburn athletic department, according to a source.

Charging documents allege that while employed at Auburn, Jenrath "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."

One member of an SEC front office told ESPN he remembered Jenrath calling himself "Don Julio" in an email. The staff member said he thought it was only recruiting spam at the time.

Recruiting evaluations are closely guarded in college football. Programs spend months scouting high school players, and rival coaches pay attention to which prospects a school is pursuing and how it grades them. Leaked evaluations can tip off competitors to a team's priorities and help them adjust their own pitches to recruits.

The case is among the rare instances in which a college athletic department has pursued criminal charges over the handling of internal information. Theft of trade secrets is a Class C felony in Alabama, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $15,000.

Jenrath's role at Auburn and the length of his employment were not immediately clear. Jail records show he remained in custody Tuesday.