•  2001: Miami Beach resident Nevin Shapiro pays $12,000 to become a University of Miami booster. He also becomes a “living scholar” for then seldom-used running back Willis McGahee.

•  December 2001: Shapiro meets Vince Wilfork and Andrew Williams at the football team’s awards banquet. Following that season — which culminated in a national championship — Shapiro allegedly gives Williams gifts, including Miami Heat tickets and a big-screen television. That begins an eight-year period in which Shapiro claims he gave improper benefits to 114 players.

•  2002: Shapiro pays Michael Huyghue $1.5 million for a 30 percent stake in Axcess Sports, and the firm begins to recruit UM players over the next several years. In the meantime, Shapiro cultivates relationships with dozens of UM players, claiming he buys them dinners, prostitutes, jewelry and invites them aboard his yacht to party.

•  2005: Sean Allen, who would later become a UM assistant equipment manager, joins Axcess as a player recruiter. Allen and Huyghue allegedly take UM quarterback Kyle Wright to Detroit for a concert and to the Bahamas for junkets to lure him into their sports agency.

2007: At halftime of UM’s final game at the Orange Bowl (a blowout loss to Virginia), an inebriated Shapiro confronts Dave Reed, UM’s then-head of compliance, cursing him and trying to draw him into a fight. Shapiro blamed Reed, among several others, for UM’s decline.

•  2008: Shapiro donates $50,000 to the basketball program during an event at Lucky Strikes bowling alley on Miami Beach. A widely-distributed photo is snapped of Shapiro with coach Frank Haith and UM president Donna Shalala, who are both smiling.

•  Early 2009: Then-UM equipment manager Bobby Revilla, at the behest of an unnamed athletic department administrator, asks Allen to write a letter to Shapiro to smooth things overall with him after a falling out in their relationship. Revilla doesn’t say exactly why.

•  November 2009: Shapiro’s investors in his $900 million Ponzi scheme file a lawsuit forcing his company, Capitol Investments, into bankruptcy. They are seeking upward of $83 million in losses.

•  May 2009: The bankruptcy trustee targets UM for hundreds of thousands of dollars that Shapiro donated to the school.

•  July/August 2009: UM settles with the trustee, paying back the money that Shapiro donated for a student-athlete lounge and to the basketball team. The settlement does not mention Shapiro’s direct cash payments and other gifts to the football and basketball players.

•  April 2010: Shapiro is charged in federal court in New Jersey with running a $900 million Ponzi scheme. He is held in federal custody without bond.

•  August 2010: Shapiro, from prison, tells The Miami Herald that he intends to write a book alleging he gave cash and other gifts to some Canes’ football players.

August 2010: UM, after reading The Herald article, contacts Shapiro, but he is unwilling to share information.

•  September 2010: Shapiro pleads guilty to securities fraud and money laundering in connection with his Ponzi scheme.

•  December 2010: Shapiro decides against writing a book and begins working jointly with Yahoo Sports.