RALEIGH, N.C. -- A new round of details in the 3-year-old University of North Carolina athletics scandal was released Monday, revealing the damning image of a star UNC football player accepting a FedEx envelope filled with $2,000 in cash.

Marvin Austin, the UNC football star whose tweets about partying in Miami launched the NCAA probe that resulted in sanctions, told special agents with the N.C. Secretary of State's office that he received the cash from a sports agent while enrolled as a student, according to search warrants unsealed Monday in Wake County Superior Court.

The warrants, which focus on Terry Shawn Watson, a sports agent based in the Atlanta area, offer a broad-brush look into the world of sports agents and their use of go-betweens to woo top professional prospects to their client lists.

Efforts to reach Watson on Monday were unsuccessful. UNC-CH officials declined to comment on details in the documents.

"We saw the search warrants for the first time today and are reviewing them," Bubba Cunningham, the UNC athletics director since November 2011, said in a statement. "It is not appropriate for anyone at the university to comment on the specifics of the Secretary of State's investigation of agent activity."

NCAA officials also declined to comment, saying they cannot discuss current, pending or potential investigations.

Watson's name came up many times as NCAA investigators conducted their probe into the UNC football program, according to documents obtained by The News & Observer, the Charlotte Observer and other media organizations that filed a public records lawsuit against the university.

In NCAA interviews in 2010, Austin and teammates Greg Little, Kendrick Burney and Charles Brown all told investigators they met Watson.

"I met him, uh, he contacted me via phone and we went out to eat and we talked or whatever," Austin told NCAA investigators. "I paid for my meal. And, uh, that was really, really it."

Those transcripts from the NCAA investigation show that Austin said he talked with Watson "a couple" of times after that, but only about Brandon Spikes, a player the sports agent had signed.

'GAVE ME MONEY'

But Austin offered a different picture to special agents with the Secretary of State who interviewed him on several occasions in 2010 and 2011.

A.H. Jones, a special agent with the Secretary of State, said in an Oct. 23 search warrant application that Austin told him: "Terry Watson was a guy who gave me money."

Austin said that Willie Barley, a go-between in Miami, facilitated the sending of a FedEx package with $2,000 inside and a bogus name on the outside to the Chapel Hill home where Austin lived during his college years.

When asked whether a money order or check arrived, Jones contends that Austin said: "No, it was green backs," "cash."

The package, according to investigators, arrived on May 4, 2010, the same month that Austin and other UNC players popped up at a pool party attended by NFL players in Miami.

When Austin was dismissed from the UNC team during the 2010 season, UNC officials estimated he had received improper benefits amounting to between $10,000 and $13,000. It was unclear on Monday whether the cash payment highlighted in the Secretary of State warrants are part of that sum.

Before Austin, a defensive star at UNC, was drafted by the New York Giants, agents, financial advisers and other businessmen had swarmed around him as an elite athlete who had great professional prospects.