This one should be filed in the old “Is anyone really that stupid?” file.
Apparently the son of Laddie (Gary Player) had some recent trouble with the law thanks to some malfeasance at last year’s Masters.
Seems Wayne Player, Gary’s son, rented a house from some folks outside Augusta last year and his check for $2,500 to them bounced.
Following multiple attempts to contact Player for restitution through a local barrister, the homeowners filed charges in Columbia County (Ga.) last July. The case remained quiet until Player’s recent return to Georgia through the Atlanta airport.
The warrant was discovered and Player was arrested by the local gendarmes.
According to Player, he was asked specifically by the homeowners to leave the subject line of the $2,000 check blank, and that the issue with the bank arose because the check was not properly filled out when the deposit attempt was made. Which sounds like a load of hogwash.
“Because it was made out to nobody, they returned the check to him,” Player said. “If you rent something and don’t pay for it, that’s not good. I would be the first to agree with that.”
Player said he did eventually communicate with the homeowners, and at a later point offered them $1,000. But he admits he simply failed to follow through with that offer, a lapse that sparked the fraud charges.
“I reached out to the guy, and I wasn’t doing very well financially at the time, and I said, ‘Look, I’ll send you $1,000 now,’ which I never did,” Player said. “I actually put the letter from the lawyer under a heap of papers and I forgot about it, which I am 100 percent responsible for.”
Player was detained before boarding a Jan. 18 flight from Atlanta, but because of the Martin Luther King holiday weekend he wasn’t processed by Columbia County until Jan. 23. In the interim he was held in a Clayton County (Ga.) detention center.
“I spent five days and five nights of hell,” he said. “I was jailed for 22 out of 24 hours a day. It was not a pleasant experience,” Player said who found out you can’t get out of jail on a federal holiday (MLK Day).
According to Player, the homeowners were paid the full $2,000 they were owed while he was in jail and the fraud charges against him have since been dropped.
So now that he’s out of jail, Wayne can spend a few nights in The Dog House.