Eighteen former NBA players have been accused of conducting a multimillion-dollar health insurance fraud conspiracy to defraud the league’s benefit plan. NBC New York reports, Terrence Williams is the alleged leader of the scheme.
Williams was picked 11th overall in the 2009 draft by the then-New Jersey Nets. Other players in the indictment include six-time NBA All-Defensive Team member Tony Allen, former Lakers guard Shannon Brown, and Glen “Big Baby” Davis, who played for the Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic, and Los Angeles Clippers during his time in the league. Allen’s wife Desiree is also charged in the indictment.
The players and at least one wife are charged with conspiracy to conduct health-care and wire fraud, as well as aggravated identity theft. Reports say 16 people are in jail following arrests made at a dozen locations across the country. The FBI stated that “this remains an ongoing investigation,” although it is unclear whether further arrests will be made.
The grand jury indictment alleges that the defendants participated in a broad plan to defraud the NBA Players’ Health and Welfare Benefit Plan between 2017 and 2020 by submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims for medical and dental treatments that were never actually performed.
According to the indictment, the defendants received roughly $2.5 million in illicit revenues from the allegedly false claims totaling approximately $3.9 million. Some of the athletes who made the allegedly fraudulent claims weren’t even in the United States when they supposedly received the treatments. They reportedly submitted fake invoices claiming they had to pay for the phantom treatments themselves.
Terrence Williams is accused of orchestrating the multi-year scam and enlisting the help of other NBA health plan users by providing them with false invoices to back up their claims.
In exchange for submitting the purportedly fraudulent documents, he received about $230,000 in kickback payments from ten other participants. Williams is also accused of assisting three co-defendants, Davis, Charles Watson Jr., and Antoine Wright, in obtaining forged letters of medical necessity to explain some of the treatments covered by the phony bills.
Additionally, Williams impersonated a person who processed plan claims.
Several of the fraudulent invoices and medical necessity papers stood out, according to court records, because “they are not on letterhead, they contain unusual formatting, they have grammatical errors.” They were also reportedly sent on the same day from different offices.
Prosecutors are looking for “any and all property, real or personal, that constitutes or is derived, directly or indirectly” from the suspected reparation fraud. If any of that property cannot be obtained for any reason, the U.S. government claims it will pursue forfeiture of the defendants’ other property up to the same amount.
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