OJ Simpson was officially released prison in the early morning hours today, but it seems that he took some extra precautions on his way out, to avoid being the subject of rampant online bidding wars.
According to TMZ, the former star running back in the NFL walked out of prison with two boxes' worth of possessions from his time behind bars. The reasoning? He didn't want to be on the receiving end of some unwanted eBay wrath. Sources at Nevada's Lovelock Correctional Center, the location where Simpson was spending quality time until this morning, said that he brought his stuff along with him because he was fearful that either some inmates who are still at Lovelock or even some of the security staff would try and sell the items for quick cash using his name. Prison officials reportedly made the initial suggestion that he'd be better off taking his belongings with him, a strategy that Simpson agreed with wholeheartedly.
As per our previous report on this story, Simpson is now out on parole after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence for kidnapping and armed robbery. Picked up by a friend, he was released at around midnight local time so he could avoid as much media attention as possible. "I told him, 'Don't come back,' and he responded, 'I don't intend to'," a spokesperson for Nevasda's corrections department commented. "He was upbeat, personable and seemed happy to get on with his life [...] Our biggest concern was our safety and the public's safety and not wanting anybody, paparazzi, to follow him. He left through a big blue door through the front gatehouse and exited quietly. He looked down because he didn't want to be photographed."
Simpson will have to adhere to some strict rules while out on parole. First, he cannot drink or otherwise consume alcohol in large quantities, nor can he hang out with any other ex-convicts. Violations of these regulations could result in him being thrown back in the slammer for an extended period of time. Simpson is considered a risky commodity as well, after he received a bad score on his parole risk assessment report, saying that he had problems with "frequent abuse" and "serious disruption of functioning."