The Missouri athletic department sold 25 cell phones at a surplus auction this summer. Mike Bellman of Columbia paid $190 for the phones, then found out information wasn’t deleted like text messages, contact numbers and e-mails from people like Gary Pinkel, Mike Anderson and Mike Alden.
Now Bellman wants $3,000 as he tries to sell them as a collector’s item off eBay. Bellman would require the buyer to sign an affidavit pledging that the information in the phones would not be used to embarrass the university. He did not accept the University’s offer to refund the phones or allow them to erase the info.
This goes back to a story that was in the Columbia Daily Tribune from Janese Heavin. I’ve got a big issue with this, but try to see both sides of every story. I bring in my buddy Steve Walsh to talk about this story and his analogy is perfect and in the end we both think Bellman needs to give the phones and/or the information back to the University without trying to profit off of it.