Keathen Pittman had never been to North Carolina. In the beginning of 2022, the 20-year-old was living in Mississippi, playing football and weighing some college options when he heard from a fellow athlete about a Junior College football program actively recruiting players like him. He reached out to the coach, Chris Griggs, and got an offer he said he couldn't refuse."Three meals a day, a workout plan, a turf field, an indoor facility -- basically stuff that Division One schools have," Pittman said, recalling the initial conversation with the coach. "It was instant. He sent me the offer page and was like, you can come. It was that simple."A few months later, Pittman left his hometown in Mississippi for the first time and headed to Clemmons, North Carolina, to be a student-athlete in Aces Elite Sports Academy. He was joined by at least 30 other young men, the majority of which came from out-of-state, as well. But the athletes said problems in the program quickly started popping up, leaving many with regrets and futures in limbo."He sold us a dream"Sha'Ron James only has one child, so when her 19-year-old son, Darius Singletary, was looking at colleges, they both wanted him to stay closer to their home in Charleston, South Carolina. The coach of Aces Elite Sports Academy, Chris Griggs, reached out to Darius on Twitter about joining his program only a few hours away, so the mom and son scheduled a visit.James said when they toured Forsyth Technical Community College with Griggs in February 2022, he said Aces Elite athletes would take classes at Forsyth, while practicing nearby, getting transportation to and from the school, and having a meal plan that provided three meals a day. She said it seemed like a great fit.Top Stories 4 Americans in North Carolina-plated car kidnapped in Mexico, FBI says Suspect killed after pursuit shootout and crash with officers, deputies in Forsyth County Wilkes County Pastor once declared brain dead, now alive, back home But a few months later, when she arrived at the Village Inn in Clemmons to drop off her son for the Fall 2022 program, she said red flags started popping up immediately."It didn’t look like what we signed up for," James said. "He didn’t have any other coaches there. He didn’t have anybody there to take the money, do the paperwork."Of the nine coaches listed on the Aces Elite Sports Academy website that WXII could get in contact with, only one said they worked for the program. Some said they've tried to reach out to Griggs to get their names removed from the staff page.Another parent, Marie Quartieri, said she had a similar feeling as she dropped off her son, Sean James. But it wasn't until he called her asking for help with food that she started to seriously worry."I had to send my son money every day to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner." Quartieri said. "He wanted to come home then. But I said, 'Sean, just give it a little more time. Give it some time because I put a lot of money into this.'"Quartieri said she gave the coach $2,500 as a down payment for the semester, out of the $5,000 Griggs told families they would owe in total. In later messages to parents, Griggs said they could send him a down payment whatever they could. James, for example, sent him a few hundred dollars, according to screenshots and emails.According to the original offer letter obtained by WXII, Griggs told students they could apply for thousands of dollars in FAFSA student loans in order to cover the semester frees for Aces Elite, which ranged from $5,000 - $10,000 for the academic year, and said they would get refunds on certain dates. The players said they started questioning where the money was going when aspects of the Aces Elite program they were promised – a dedicated wing at the Village Inn, three meals a day, transportation to and from practices and class – didn’t turn into reality."The only thing I should be doing is playing football, not worrying about where I’m living"According to members of the Fall's Aces Elite program, their parents, and marketing materials sent to them by Griggs, the athletes were told thought they'd have their own wing of the Village Inn and Suites in Clemmons to stay in for the semester. They were relocated to the Super 8 hotel nearby within the first week of the program. The manager of that location on Ramada Drive said the coach would make last-minute reservations, going day-by-day rather than blocking off rooms for a longer period of time. He also said Griggs' payments were consistently late, and the manager eventually told the group they could no longer stay there.Get the latest news stories of interest by clicking hereThe group relocated to at least two more hotels after that, the last one being the La Quinta in Winston-Salem. Hotel employees there reported similar last-minute reservations and late payments, resulting in the athletes being kicked out of their rooms at the check out cut-off. The players confirmed they'd be sitting in the lobby for hours, sometimes until 10 p.m., until the coach would come with money to get them rooms for the night. Occasionally, players said they would pay for their own rooms. With each hotel move, players reported the conditions got more and more cramped. "The first week, we had our own beds," Pittman said. "Then the second week, we went from sleeping in our own beds to like, three in a room. And then before I left, it was five to a room." The student-athletes also reported having to cram into their own cars to get to class, despite being told in marketing materials and emails from Griggs they'd have shuttles to their classes at Forsyth Tech. The few that brought their cars from home for the semester ended up taking large groups of guys to and from class, sometimes even transporting them in the trunk, according to cell phone video from one student-athlete. "We're part of your football program. And they're like, 'What are you talking about?'"Forsyth Technical Community College does not have a sports program, so when students started coming into the financial aid office asking about applying for thousands of dollars in loans to play for "Forsyth’s football program," staff members said they were confused."I began to explain to them, we don't have sports at Forsyth Tech," said Masonne Sawyer, the vice president of Student Success Services at the community college. "We were able to find website that listed the Forsyth Tech name and used one of our old logos as part of an affiliation, which kind of makes sense then why parents and students might think we're affiliated."Watch: NOWCAST streaming newscastsThe community college's administrators had sent a cease and desist letter sent to Griggs, which included an attached screenshot of the Forsyth Tech logo that was being used on the Aces Elite website. That cease and desist letter requested that all FTTC logos and references be removed from the Aces Elite marketing and website.The president of the college Dr. Janet N. Spriggs also put out a message on the college's social media pages, website and via email to all students clarifying that the schools was not "affiliated, associated, partnered, or in any way connected with the Aces Elite Sports Academy, or any of its subsidiaries or its affiliates" on Aug. 25, 2022. Even when the program's members figured out that Aces Elite had no formal affiliation with Forsyth Tech, some athletes said they stayed in the hopes that they'd at least get football experience and finish the semester of credits they paid for. Throughout the fall semester, they often went to Student Success Services for help, according to Sawyer."They would come by and ask to go to our pantries or even ask for money for food," she said. "We provide that, but it got to a point where it was too repetitive." Sawyer and other Forsyth Tech staff said they cross-referenced their student records and the roster on the Aces Elite website, finding at least 26 overlapping names. They said they then reached out to whatever contact the student had listed, to inform them that Aces Elite and Forsyth Tech had no affiliation, and to offer support.Sawyer said they also intervened when they identified several applications for financial aid, when the amounts requested far exceeded the average tuition at FTTC. "One mom called and said, 'We were gonna take a $30,000 loan and I'm like, 'No, no, you don't need to do that to come here," she said. "We knew we had to do something"In the late hours of Friday morning, Sept. 9, a student that Sawyer described as distraught and upset, came into the Student Success Services Center. They reportedly told the staff the Aces Elite fall football program had been disbanded by the coach. Checkout at the hotel they were currently staying at was in an hour, meaning the group of students would be homeless in less than 60 minutes. According to one player, who asked to remain anonymous, coach Griggs told some of them over the phone that if they didn't pay him more money, there'd be no more program for them. "I would say, 'We understand you need money, but that’s not what you advertised from the beginning,'" the player said. "Then, he abandoned us."The athletes said Griggs stopped answering them. At that time, Sawyer and other members of Forsyth Tech leadership went to the La Quinta Inn and paid for rooms for all the remaining players to stay for the next several days, until they could get back to their hometowns. The college footed the bill for all their one-way flights or bus tickets, their final destinations ranging from Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Hawaii. The administration also went to the Applebee's across the street, creating a running tab for the remaining students to have two meals a day there until they were able to get home, which happened by the following Wednesday.Sawyer estimated that stretch of stay and food for the players, and their transportation home, cost around $5,000. She said they're not trying to get that money back, as that's just part of Forsyth Tech being a "place of promise.""We realize you're here under the premise of some program that's really nonexistent in collaboration with us, but we also realize you need help," Sawyer said. "I want to treat every student like my own child. I have college-aged kids. I did what I would want somebody to do for my child."Lack of Affiliations with Practice Spaces Under the "Our Campus and Facilities" tab on the Aces Elite Sports Academy website, there are photos of an outdoor field. They are images of Truist Sports Park in Bermuda Run. Griggs also posted videos on Twitter walking at those fields and at the gym across the street, Rise Indoor Sports, saying the Aces Elite athletes would be working out and practicing there. The managers of both facilities told WXII they are not partnered with the sports academy, never came to an agreement with Griggs to use their sites, and did not give Griggs permission to use their images. Lane Newsome, general manager of Rise Indoor Sports, also sent Griggs emails asking him to remove their facilities' images from his social media and website.Videos posted to Twitter by Griggs show the players practicing in the parking lots and fields surrounding the different hotels they stayed in. Multiple hotel managers told WXII this contributed to the group being asked to leave. James said her son Darius reported a lack of proper equipment, despite branded uniforms and helmets being pictured on the site and in their offer letters. "He comes home, he feels like a failure"When asked why they stayed in the Aces Elite fall program, players said it was because they just wanted to play football. And parents reiterated this, saying it was their child's dream. The final straw for many was the games. According to the schedule posted on the Aces Elite website and social media pages, they had games in Minnesota and Miami. One athlete, who asked to remain anonymous, described their transportation as two 15-passenger vans, one driven by coach Griggs and the other, the athletes drove. They said for both games, they drove straight there for 15+ hours, barely getting time to warm up before playing, and lost both games. "We didn’t get to a hotel," he said. "15 hours straight back and the only thing we ate on that trip was two boxes of pizza. One box of pizza per bus. We’re just sitting here like, where is the money going?"Several players left the program after the games, including Quartieri's son. "It was a loss for me; not only money, but especially for my son," she said. "He’s depressed about it because he had something. He could’ve had something going for himself if he had just chosen another school. This was his dream. And you literally took my son’s dream away and are making him have to wait a little longer."Once the program ended in September, Forsyth Tech said 13 of the Aces Elite players continued taking classes virtually through the end of the semester. Still RecruitingWXII reached out to Chris Griggs via phone, email and text to learn what happened during the fall 2022 Aces Elite football program. He declined doing a sit-down interview multiple times over several months.Griggs' twitter account is tagged in the bio of the Aces Elite Sports Academy account, and he is still very active on it.As of this report, he has retweeted posts from football players from around the country, saying they'd been offered a spot in the academy for Fall 2023. He also posted they'll be in West Palm Beach, FL, for the fall 2023 program and that they have a partnership with the Marriott hotel in the area to provide housing for the semester.NAVIGATE: Home | Weather | Watch NOWCAST TV | Local News | National | News We Love |Trending Stories Keep up with the latest news and weather by downloading the WXII app here.