Eighteen former NBA players were arrested in early October for committing fraud on the NBA’s health and welfare benefit plan. The players planned to take around $4 million from the plan, receiving money for medical services that never happened. The fraudulent scheme began in 2017, lasting just three years before authorities found it. They all face two charges; conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud.
The eighteen players are Tony Allen, Alan Anderson, Shannon Brown, Glen Davis, Christopher Douglas-Roberts, Melvin Ely, Jamario Moon, Darius Miles, Milton Palacio, Ruben Patterson, Eddie Robinson, Gregory Smith, Sebastian Telfair, Charles Watson Jr., Terrence Williams, Antoine Wright and Tony Wroten. Some players, such as Allen and Davis, are recognizable names in basketball. The indicted players made a cumulative $343 million from their contracts as players in the NBA.
According to Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the leader of the scheme was Terrence Williams. In 2017, Williams reportedly submitted inaccurate claims for what he labeled “chiropractic care”. The NBA paid him around $7,500 in cash. Overall, the players submitted claims for about $3.9 million, though just $2.5 million was paid out to the players. Each defendant reportedly had at least $65,000 paid out to them in fake medical claims, and at most $420,000.
The scheme was revealed because the players “didn’t bother comparing notes to see whether they were raising red flags by putting in for the exact same dental procedures on the same days,” Strauss said in an interview with ABC News. Wroten, Allen and Davis all reportedly received root canals on the exact same teeth on the exact same day. Additionally, they all put in claims for the same three crowns just 11 days later.
Another one of the arrested players was supposed to be getting near $50,000 value worth of root canals when in reality he was in Taiwan playing professional basketball. He didn’t even care to hide that. Public data such as box scores revealed that he scored 11 points for Bank of Taiwan on that day. The invoices, when revisited, were noticeably fake. The indictment mentioned that the formatting was off, citing grammatical errors and mistakes within the letterhead.
In a comment regarding the situation, the National Basketball Players Association said that they are “aware of the indictment of former NBA players announced earlier today” and that they will “continue to monitor the matter.”
