LeShon Johnson, Ex-N.F.L. Running Back, Ran Major Dogfighting Kennel, U.S. Says

The federal authorities stated this week that they’d damaged up a serious dogfighting kennel in Oklahoma led by the previous Nationwide Soccer League working again LeShon Johnson, seizing 190 pit-bull-type canine in what they described as essentially the most ever taken from a single individual in a federal case.

In a information launch, the Justice Division stated on Tuesday {that a} 21-count indictment in opposition to Mr. Johnson, 54, had lately been unsealed in federal courtroom in Muskogee, Okla. He was arrested on March 20 and arraigned the identical day earlier than being launched, in keeping with courtroom paperwork.

Mr. Johnson, who performed for the Inexperienced Bay Packers, the Arizona Cardinals and the New York Giants within the Nineteen Nineties, is dealing with felony costs of possessing and trafficking canine to be used in an animal combating enterprise. If convicted, he may resist 5 years in jail and a $250,000 wonderful for every rely.

He beforehand pleaded responsible to state dogfighting costs in 2004 and acquired a five-year deferred sentence.

“The F.B.I. is not going to tolerate criminals that hurt harmless animals for his or her twisted type of leisure,” Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, stated in an announcement. “The F.B.I. views animal cruelty investigations as a precursor to bigger, organized crime efforts, just like trafficking and homicides.”

Courtney R. Jordan, a lawyer for Mr. Johnson, declined to touch upon Wednesday.

Investigators say that Mr. Johnson “selectively bred ‘champion’ and ‘grand champion’ combating canine — canine which have respectively gained three or 5 fights” as a part of his prison enterprise, which was generally known as Mal Kant Kennels and was based mostly in Damaged Arrow, Okla., and Haskell, Okla.

He marketed and offered stud rights and offspring from successful combating canine to others involving in canine combating, the authorities stated, selling their bloodlines.

Federal prosecutors stated that they’d obtained textual content messages, emails and cash switch app transactions that present that Mr. Johnson had profited from his dogfighting enterprise.

The variety of canine seized from Mr. Johnson seemed to be about thrice the quantity found on the property of one other former N.F.L. participant whose imprisonment on dogfighting costs dominated headlines within the early 2000s: the star quarterback Michael Vick.

Mr. Johnson was a standout at Northern Illinois College, ending sixth within the Heisman Trophy voting in 1993. He was chosen within the third spherical of the 1994 N.F.L. draft by the Packers, for whom he performed lower than two seasons and struggled to copy his school success. He spent components of three seasons with the Arizona Cardinals.

In 1998, he signed as a free agent with the Giants, however his profession was disrupted when he was identified that yr with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He scored two touchdowns the subsequent yr after finishing chemotherapy and radiation therapies, The Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma Metropolis reported.

His newest arrest on animal cruelty costs recalled the case of Mr. Vick, the dual-threat quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons whose success within the N.F.L. — guiding his staff to the playoffs and making the duvet of the Madden online game — was short-circuited by a dogfighting conviction. He served 18 months in a federal jail and a further two months in house confinement for his function. He resumed his profession with Philadelphia Eagles, and later the New York Jets and the Pittsburgh Steelers, earlier than retiring in 2017.