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Eighteen former NBA players were charged with attempting to defraud the nearly $ 4 million NBA health and welfare benefit plan, officials said Thursday.
The accused include Terrence Williams, Alan Anderson, Anthony Allen, Shannon Brown, William Bynum, Ronald Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Christopher Douglas-Roberts, Melvin Ely, Jamario Moon, Darius Miles, Milton Palacio, Ruben Patterson, Eddie Robinson, Gregory Smith, Sebastian Telfair, Charles Watson Jr., Antoine Wright and Anthony Wroten.
Allen’s wife, Desiree Allen, has also been named as the defendant.
Those charged face one count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud.
“The defendants’ playbook involved fraud and deception,” US lawyer Audrey Strauss told reporters. “They will have to answer for their gross violations of the law.”
Strauss called Williams, a 34-year-old Seattle native who spent four seasons in the NBA, the “hub of the program,” submitting false claims to the league’s health care plan, New York federal prosecutors said.
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He allegedly provided false invoices to support the fraudulent claims in exchange for bribes totaling at least $ 230,000, authorities said.
Players submitted $ 3.9 million in bogus claims and $ 2.5 million has been paid, officials said.
The scheme was allegedly discovered, in part, due to the shoddy work of the defendants, according to the authorities.
For example, Smith, who played for the houston rockets, submitted requests for intravenous sedation, root canals and crowns he allegedly received during a dental procedure on Dec. 20, 2018, in Beverly Hills, prosecutors said.
“Travel records, emails and scores from publicly available boxes showed he was playing professional basketball in Taiwan that week and did not receive root canal treatment in Beverly Hills as reported in the report. claim form he submitted, ”Strauss said.
At the time, Smith was in the Taiwan Super Basketball League and he scored 11 points for Bank of Taiwan on December 21 in an 84-76 loss to Kaohsiung Jeoutai Technology (KKL).
Several of the fake invoices and medical necessity forms stood out because “they are not on letterhead, they contain unusual formatting, they contain grammatical errors,” according to the indictment.
Michael Driscoll, deputy director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said cases like this alleged NBA fraud are having a negative impact on consumers.
“This (health care) industry is losing tens of millions of dollars a year to fraud,” he said. “These costs are then passed on to businesses and customers. It is a fraud that we take very seriously.
Davis was one of the best known defendants.
TO 6 feet, 9 inches tall and 289 pounds, he was a fan favorite and a member of the last The 2008 Boston Celtics World Champion Team.
Telfair, the longtime cousin NBA player and Chinese basketball icon Stephon Marbury, was famous even before stepping into professional hardwood. He was one of the greatest high school players of his time and the Portland Trail Blazers’ 13th pick in the 2004 NBA Draft.
It was not immediately clear Thursday morning whether any of the players had hired defense attorneys.
Last month, former NFL players Clinton Portis, Tamarick Vanover and Robert McCune have pleaded guilty to their role in a national system of healthcare fraud and could face years in prison, the US Department of Justice has said.
Portis, Vanover and McCune have admitted defrauding an NFL program set up to reimburse uninsured medical expenses for retired players and their families, the Justice Department said.
This is a developing story, please update here for updates.
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