Winthrop Intelligence, the organization behind the common database program for college athletic departments called Win AD, has taken a recently dreadful change.
Late last year, Drue Moore, a former activities prosecutor who co-founded the Winthrop, was found dead in his house in Durham, N. C., which also served as the official email address for the business.
Officers responded to a cardiac arrest call shortly after noon on Friday, according to a spokesman for the Durham police department, where they discovered the 55-year-old Moore who had died. The spokesperson told Sportico in an email that the department is currently looking into the matter as a “non-criminal death.” No other details were provided.
Win AD, a subscription software service that charges schools up to$ 14, 000 per year, provides a suite of searchable databases extracted from over 150, 000 public records, including athletic department employee contracts and various third-party agreements. It makes it simple to compare, for instance, coaching and administrative salaries for various college sports programs. The product, which was introduced in 2009, quickly developed into a must-have negotiation tool for college athletic directors and is thought to have reached nearly 80 % market penetration among D-I schools.

Meanwhile, Ben Moore, Winthrop Intelligence’s other co-founder and Drue’s cousin, is facing an active bench warrant for his arrest after he was inadvertently released from jail last summer while serving time for a contempt-of-court charge stemming from the divorce proceedings with his ex-wife, Amy Elizabeth.
At the center of their marriage dissolution was a dispute over Ben Moore’s 50 % stake in Winthrop Intelligence, which he claimed to have put in a Wyoming” spendthrift trust” benefiting their children, and for which Drue Moore was named trust protector. However, the judge who oversaw their divorce ultimately determined that the property had been unlawfully transferred from the estate and ordered Ben Moore to pay$ 17.5 million to his ex-wife, the majority of which was determined by Winthrop’s value.
In 2023, Sportico published the results of a nine-month investigation that detailed how the reclusive Moore cousins went from building a multimillion-dollar college sports business to partnering with an ex-felon, Robert Scott Brooks, in what was alleged to be a convoluted asset-concealment and tax scheme, involving various shell companies, trusts, collusive lawsuits and bankruptcy petitions.

At a Boulder business meetup in the middle of 2010, Ben Moore was introduced to Brooks. In order for Moore and Elizabeth to begin working with his new business partner on a commercial dishwasher project, they moved their family from Minnesota to Colorado in 2014. Brooks previously pleaded guilty to bank fraud and served 11 months in prison.
Ben Moore was given a 30-day jail term in July for repeatedly omitting information that had to do with his general and Winthrop assets in particular. A district court judge imposed a stay of confinement on Moore until he was able to settle a remedial contempt charge by delivering the necessary discovery.
However, on July 31, he was released from custody “on error”, according to court records, prompting a bench warrant for his arrest to be issued on Aug. 14. The following month, a magistrate judge gave a temporary order regarding the custody of the former couple’s minor children, stating that Ben Moore was “on the run]and ] his actual whereabouts are unknown”. In an order last month, he was denied all parenting time or decision-making rights until the warrant was resolved. A representative from the Colorado judicial branch confirmed on Tuesday that the warrant remained in effect.
Aaron Suazo, the attorney representing Ben Moore in the divorce proceeding, did not respond to an email and voicemail. In addition, Moore is currently contesting a third-party subpoena of his cell phone in a separate lawsuit that Robert Brooks ‘ former attorney, Andrew Quiat, brought against him for unpaid legal bills. The attorney representing Moore in that matter, Glenn Merrick, did not respond to an email inquiry.
These most recent developments give fresh meaning to a corporate narrative that is already fraught with controversy. They also beg the question of who, exactly, is in charge of Winthrop, which appears to be a going operation.
Kevin Barefoot, the company’s longtime director of sales and public face, left in late 2021 for a job at Teamworks, where he currently serves as vice president of business development. Winthrop’s other veteran employee, director of operations Kevin Cohen, left in January 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.

” I was shocked and saddened to hear the news”, Barefoot said of Drue Moore’s death, in a text message. ” I will continue to be in prayer for his family, wife and two sons”. ( Cohen did not respond to request for comment. )
Drue Moore co-founded Beach Sports Group with renowned entertainment lawyer Stanton” Larry” Stein after graduating from law school at the University of Tulsa. Later, Moore relocated to North Carolina and began working as general counsel for Total Sports Inc., the book publisher that later merged with Quokka. Stein described Drue Moore as” a great lawyer and an even greater person” in an email to Sportico this week.
Records indicate that Drue Moore’s California law license remained active through the entire year.
Elizabeth, while testifying in the divorce case, described Drue as the person who conceived of the idea behind Winthrop Intelligence’s athletic department database.
Winthrop was registered as a Delaware corporation from 2009 to 2017, when it was domesticated in Wyoming—a state known for corporate anonymity. At that point, D. Scott Robinson began being listed as the company’s manager on its North Carolina filings.
Robinson is a tax and estate lawyer who runs the Wyoming-based Opes Law and is a partner in Berg Hill Greenleaf Ruscitti ( BHGR ), a firm based in Boulder, Colorado.
Robinson is described as a” tax attorney known for his innovative and creative thinking and is frequently called upon by attorneys and other tax and estate planning professionals to help find solutions to the “it can’t be done” problems described in his online bio on BHGR’s website.
According to court and state records, Opes has registered a number of Wyoming LLCs connected to the Moore cousins since 2016, and in April 2017, Ben Moore appointed Opes Directed Fiduciary Services as the trustee of the trust he allegedly transferred his Winthrop stake to.
In permanent orders issued on Nov. 12, 2021, the district court judge overseeing Ben Moore’s and Elizabeth’s divorce found that trust to be “illusory and fraudulent”, and accused the cousins of being “in collusion to hide assets” from both the court and the IRS.

” This case presents a unique problem to the court created by ( Ben Moore’s ) lack of disclosure and lack of credibility”, the judge declared, while issuing multiple contempt citations against him.
Despite neither cousin being publicly identified with Winthrop for years, Drue’s home address was still listed, as recently as last spring, as the company’s primary mailing address in its filings. According to Durham County property records, Drue Moore and his wife transferred the deed of their home, in equal half shares, to two Wyoming entities that were both registered by Opes in 2020.
Robinson ignored numerous requests for comment.
In early 2022, Drue Moore registered a new company in Luxembourg called BWL Global, according to records filed with the European country’s business authority. Ben Moore and the Colorado Secretary of State filed a business called Product Consulting Services around the same time.
Ben Moore and his current wife were renting a 6, 000-square-foot home in Denver when he and his current wife organized another Colorado company, Product Consulting Services LLC, in May. Later that month, a process server working for Quiat attempted to serve Moore’s wife, Julia Moore, at the residence. In an affidavit, the process service alleged that Julia Moore ducked into the home’s garage to avoid service, a claim she denied.
On Monday, Glenn Merrick, Ben Moore’s lawyer in the Quiat matter, filed a motion to quash or modify the subpoena of his client’s cell phone, arguing that it was overly broad.
Ben has been involved in a highly contentious divorce proceeding within the time allocable by the subpoena, Merrick wrote in the court filing. In relation to that divorce case, he has spoken with his attorney frequently, both verbally and in writing.