WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Brad Remsburg won’t make excuses for his son, Jake.
“As a dad, I’m well aware, as are all the other players involved, that our sons in this case made a mistake,” Brad Remsburg said sitting in the living room of his West Des Moines home. “Jake should be held accountable to the decision he made, which he knew was wrong. He should have paid a fine, which he ended up doing, but all of this other nonsense is completely ridiculous.”
In September of 2023, Jake Remsburg, a member of the Iowa State football team, was one of 15 student-athletes charged in a months-long Iowa DCI investigation into online sports gambling at the campuses of Iowa and Iowa State Universities. Initially, all players were charged with tampering with records, some were also charged with identity theft. Remsburg, along with nine other athletes, ultimately pleaded guilty to underage gambling, a simple misdemeanor; several others had charges dropped over a lack of criminal activity.
“I think more than anything else it’s the ‘why?’ and, I don’t think I’m alone in that. People have been asking that across the state from the get-go really,” Remsburg said.
Attorney Van Plumb, who is currently representing former Cyclones Isaiah Lee and Eyioma Uwazurike, wants answers to that question as well. According to a motion Monday, Plumb questions what he views as a warrantless search of dorms and athletic facilities, which violated the rights of student athletes charged in the case. The filing accuses five DCI agents led by Special Agent Brian Sanger of using a software called Kibana to geofence dorms and athletic facilities to identify irregular online sports wagering without an initial criminal complaint.
“I’m not a DCI investigator,” Remsburg said. “I’m not an attorney or a police officer, I’m just a citizen. But, looking at this I don’t see how it’s possible they garnered the information they did without apparently any complaints, subpoena, arrest warrants or search warrants. None of that appeared to take place here. I don’t know the answer. My opinion is that a person or group or people decided this was something they wanted to pursue and I’ll let people decide why they decided to do that.”
Reynolds, Bird speak at anti-abortion rallyDuring a press briefing on October 25, 2023, Governor Kim Reynolds was asked about the DCI investigation.
“I support whole-heartedly the department and the decisions that were made,” Reynolds responded. “They received some concerns, they looked into it like they do with other issues.”
According to the motion filed by Plumb, when Agent Sanger was asked why he wanted to conduct “warrantless searches” he stated he couldn’t remember other than concerns he had about potential match-fixing.
“That’s completely ridiculous,” Remsburg said. “You are undertaking something this large, you better know that you’re going to have questions asked of you down the road and you better come up with a better answer than ‘I don’t remember’ – it’s unacceptable.”
In the case against Isaiah Lee, Plumb is requesting further investigation to get to the bottom of how the investigation began and why it was allowed to continue.
“At some point, somebody has to be held accountable for their decisions just the way these student-athletes have been held accountable and I hope for that person is commiserate to the degree they may have made a wrong decision, because in the case of the athletes and families that is nowhere close to the offenses they’re accused of participating in,” Remsburg said.
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