High school basketball star claims he didn’t know he was 29, details emerge on how he got busted

Jonathan Nicola made national headlines last week when it was revealed the star high school basketball player at Canada's Catholic Central High was, in fact, a 29-year-old man.

Now, details on how Nicola's story unraveled have emerged.

Nicola (6-foot-9, 205 pounds), a South Sudanese immigrant who made his way to Catholic Central in Windsor, Ontario, in November, was detained by The Canadian Border Services Agency last week for "contravening the Immigration Refugee Protection Act."

He was in the country on a student visa, and came to Windsor through a program called Homestay, which finds homes for foreign students.

Tuesday, the Toronto Star reported that Nicola, who claimed he was an 11th-grader, testified in a hearing last week that he did not know his true age.

Nicola said in the hearing that he was approached by a "coach Steyn," who helped him obtain a student visa to play in Canada. He claimed that coach produced his falsified paperwork.

Nicola excelled in his only season at Catholic Central, and his coach, Pete Cusumano, told the Windsor Star in January that he believed Nicola had a shot at playing in the NBA.

But it all came apart when Nicola applied for a travel visa for the United States a month into his time at Catholic Central.

The fingerprints he provided in that application matched the prints of a man who applied for entry to the U.S as a student in 2015.

In that application, Nicola's birth year was listed as 1986.

His Canadian visa application listed his birth year as 1998.