Paula Levine

Adam said that Brian would drive back through the old neighborhood in his tricked out cars.

And according to Adam, he was the one who helped Brian pay for those cars.

Did you ever give Brian money?

So how much do you think you gave him?

Through all of our reporting, we were trying to track down the source of Brian's money.

We asked Nevin Shapiro and Sean Shannazzi, but they said they only gave Brian small amounts.

Here, Adam was telling us that he provided bigger amounts, the kind of money Brian would have needed to buy cars and rims.

We can't confirm Ollie Adams' account of his relationship with Brian.

Brian's brothers weren't aware of any connection he might have had with Adam, neither was his roommate Dwayne Hendricks.

But if a drug kingpin really was bankrolling Brian, that would certainly help explain why he wouldn't tell his family about it.

His mom did everything she could to keep Brian and his brothers out of trouble.

The Padnas hoped Brian's chance at the NFL would help them escape Little Haiti.

Getting money from Zopound would never have fit into the family's picture of Brian.

It took us eight years of reporting to track down the source of Brian's money.

To us, the possibility that Brian was getting money from a founder of Zopound certainly seemed significant.

But there is no indication that the police ever interviewed Adam about Brian.

In 2019, I interviewed Rudy Gonzalez, the supervisor on the case, and I asked him whether they ever looked into Brian's cash flow.

Did you look through Brian's bank records, and if so, did you find anything worthwhile?

No, we didn't.

There was another big reason we thought the police should have wanted to talk to Ali Adam.