The former Auburn athletic department employee accused of sharing confidential football recruiting information with other schools was enrolled at the University of Tennessee for the fall semester and never employed by the UT athletic department, Knox News confirmed.
David Rudolph Jenrath, 24, of Franklin, Tennessee, was arrested on felony charges of theft of trade secrets and computer tampering. He was identified as a suspect after the university was told by another school that confidential information had been shared. He turned himself into Auburn police on Sept. 28 and was booked in the Lee County Jail on a $15,000 bond before he was released.
Tennessee plays Auburn at Neyland Stadium on Oct. 3.
Among the information Jenrath shared with up to
11 schools, according to multiple reports, were documents containing personnel information about high school recruits Auburn was targeting in the 2027-29 classes.
Jenrath enrolled at UT for the 2026 fall semester as a junior in the applied artificial intelligence program within the College of Emerging and Collaborative Studies, according to the UT student directory, which is updated nightly. Jenrath was never employed by UT athletics, Vice Chancellor for Communications Tisha Benton told Knox News.
Jenrath worked at Auburn as a player personnel scouting assistant from January through June of this year, according to his since-deleted LinkedIn profile. He focused on running backs and special teams, including evaluating prospects; preparing scouting reports and recruiting summaries; assisting with opponent scouting; and maintaining recruiting databases.
None of the information Jenrath is accused of sharing included game plan or playbook details, nor was any related to Auburn's name, image and likeness efforts or revenue sharing with student athletes, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Auburn University Controller's Office lists five payroll payments – a combined $535 – to Jenrath from Sept. 12 to Dec. 5, 2025, during the final season of football coach Hugh Freeze's tenure. Jenrath was retained by current Auburn coach Alex Golesh's staff in January but was fired in the spring, according to CBS Sports.
Jenrath is accused of sharing confidential recruiting documents
Jenrath used the email pseudonym "Don Julio" to share the documents with up to 11 schools and his email's subject line included Golesh's home address, according to multiple reports. The documents reportedly did not include game plan information.
The schools that received the confidential documents have not been identified. At least several of schools returned the documents to Auburn, according to one of the sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
CBS Sports reported that the documents were sent in July and contained Auburn coaches' evaluations of recruits, including information on who the program was targeting. The documents also reportedly included contact information for recruiting staff and scouts and a grading system to sort recruits.
CBS Sports also reported that the documents were emailed to at least 85 different addresses.
Jenrath's arrest came nearly a decade after the 2016 "WakeyLeaks" scandal, when Wake Forest's football program discovered that team radio broadcaster Tommy Elrod, a former player and assistant coach at the school, had passed along its plays to several opponents dating back to 2014. Wake Forest was alerted to the leaks only after an equipment manager found a black binder in Louisville's stadium containing diagrams of the Demon Deacons' plays.
Elrod was fired and banned from Wake Forest athletics and its facilities for his involvement. Louisville and Virginia Tech, the two ACC teams that were found to have accepted the leaked information, were fined $25,000 apiece by the conference, which at the time was the maximum fine allowed by the conference’s bylaws.
Alex Golesh's staff at Auburn has strong Tennessee connections
The timing of Jenrath's arrest adds another wrinkle to the Auburn-Tennessee SEC matchup on Oct. 3 (3:30 p.m., ESPN). Golesh was Tennessee's offensive coordinator from 2021-22 and this will be his first time back at Neyland Stadium as a coach.
Seven other members of Auburn's staff coached at Tennessee under Josh Heupel, including co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Tim Banks, who was fired as Tennessee's defensive coordinator in December. Six members of the Tigers' support staff also worked under Heupel at Tennessee.
Golesh was asked on Sept. 30 for his reaction to Jenrath's arrest.
"Literally no reaction," he said. "... And this ain't coach talk. Couldn't care less. Focus is on Tennessee."
Golesh was then asked if the leaks made him reconsider how he handles personnel information moving forward and downplayed its importance.
"When the original situation came up, obviously we had to make sure we dotted our i's and crossed our t's," he said. "But we have it in place. There's nothing we feel like is going to affect anything, in terms of how it got out."
Emmett Siegel covers Tennessee baseball for Knox News. Email: emmett.siegel@knoxnews.com; X: @EmmettSiegel_
Knox News higher education reporter Keenan Thomas and Montgomery Advertiser Auburn athletics reporter Adam Cole contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee student accused of stealing Auburn secrets never worked for Vols
