In 1996, eight months after Salt Lake City won the 2002 Winter Games, a senior bid official wrote a letter to an IOC member's grandson.
The gravy train was over for Raouf Scally, a student who was told he was receiving his final $500 payment "to assist you with your needs in Atlanta." In all, Scally collected 22 checks worth $14,500 from Salt Lake organizers.
On Feb. 16, 1996, Dave Johnson wrote to notify Scally of a change in priorities that didn't include paying him any longer.
"We have made our best efforts in trying to support you and your education in Atlanta, but after this check we will be in a difficult position to do so," Johnson wrote.
The letter was fished by The Associated Press from the extensive file archives at the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. A legal filing number in one corner indicates it was turned over to the U.S. Justice Department under a grand jury subpoena.
Scally was a grandson of Mohammed Benjelloun, an International Olympic Committee delegate from Morocco until his death in 1997.
The Scally letter recalls another Johnson letter that set off the Olympic vote-buying scandal in November 1998.
In that letter, Johnson wrote to cut off the daughter of IOC member Rene Essomba of Cameroon after she received $108,340 in payments while attending American University in Washington.
Essomba himself got $60,000 in cash, and Salt Lake paid for his family to stay at a Paris hotel at $300 a night for 22 nights in 1994 and 1995. He died in 1998 before the Olympic scandal broke.