18 ex-NBAers charged with medical fraud
More than a dozen NBA veterans — including former Coney Island high school star and 10year pro Sebastian Telfair — have been charged with ripping off millions from the league’s health plan by submitting bogus invoices with glaring typos and discrepancies, Manhattan federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
The indictment accuses 18 former players of defrauding $4 million from the NBA’s Health and Welfare Benefit Plan, which provides additional coverage to eligible active and retired players.
The defendants, who earned a combined $360 million during their NBA careers, allegedly submitted “false and fraudulent claims for reimbursement of expenses for medical and dental services that were not actually rendered,” according to court papers.
The scheme was orchestrated by former Nets shooting guard Terrence Williams, who allegedly recruited other retired athletes and supplied them with the fake invoices and letters for reimbursement in exchange for at least $230,000 in kickbacks, said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss.
But Williams’ phony documentation raised suspicions — particularly a pair of 2019 letters that were supposedly from a chiropractor and were submitted by two defendants in the case.
“[The] letters are unusual in several respects: they are not on letterhead, contain unusual formatting, have grammatical errors, and one of the letters misspells a purported patient’s name,” the indictment states.
In another red flag, former Bulls power forward Gregory Smith submitted $48,000 in claims for eight root canals and crowns supposedly performed at a Beverly Hills dental office on Dec. 20, 2018, when he was out of the country that entire month, playing professional basketball in Taiwan.
Similarly, former Celtics power forward Ronald Glen Davis, aka Big Baby, allegedly submitted a $27,000 dental claim for work performed at the same Beverly Hills dental office — even though he was traveling in Paris on that date.
Reimbursement documents provided by Williams and submitted by two of the defendants falsely showed that they had undergone 13 root canals and 12 crowns on the exact same teeth and on the exact same date, Strauss said.
Among the defendants are 18 former NBA players — including six-time NBA All-Defensive Team member Tony Allen, Shannon Brown, Alan Anderson, William Bynum, Christopher DouglasRoberts, Melvin Ely, Jamario Moon, Darius Miles, Milton Palacio, Ruben Patterson, Eddie Robinson, Charles Watson Jr., Antoine Wright and Anthony Wroten.
Allen’s wife, Desiree Allen, is also charged in the scheme.
Miles earned nearly $62 million during his 11 years in the league, followed by Tony Allen’s $40.9 million, Patterson’s $36.8 million and Big Baby Davis’ $32.2 million.
Telfair, a Brooklyn native and the cousin of former NBA star Stephon Marbury, earned $19.2 million for 10 seasons. The fraud, which began in 2017 and continued into 2020, resulted in a $2.5 million windfall for the defendants, but was halted before the remaining claims were paid out, court papers allege.
The defendants are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare and wire fraud, for which they face up to 20 years in prison. Williams faces an additional rap of aggravated identity theft for impersonating the plan’s administrative manager in a call to intimidate another player who had refused to pay the kickback, Strauss said.
Telfair, wearing a gray sweatshirt, white sweatpants and lime green basketball shoes, pleaded not guilty Thursday at his presentment before Manhattan federal court Judge Katharine Parker. The jurist approved a court-appointed lawyer based on his financial disclosure and ordered his release on a $250,000 bond. His eyes welled with tears but he did not cry as he exited the courthouse with no comment.
Fourteen defendants were arrested in nine other states, where they’ll appear before a judge. Three had yet to be taken into custody, Strauss said.
None of the other people named in the indictment could immediately be reached for comment.
“The defendants’ playbook involved fraud and deception,” Strauss said at a press conference. “Thanks to the hard work of our law enforcement partners, their alleged scheme has been disrupted, and they will have to answer for their flagrant violations of the law.”
An NBA spokesman said they were cooperating fully with authorities and called the allegations “particularly disheartening.”