By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Eighteen former NBA players have been arrested and charged federally for defrauding the NBA’s Health and Welfare Benefit Plan out of approximately $4,000,000, law enforcement officials say, per Tom Winter.
Some of the players charged include:
– Milt Palacio
– Sebastian Telfair
– Antoine Wright
– Darius Miles
– Ruben Patterson
– Eddie Robinson
– Gregory Smith
– Glen Davis
– Jamario Moon
– Terrence Williams
– Alan Anderson
– Tony Allen
– Shannon Brown
– William Bynum
– Melvin Ely
– Christopher Douglas-Roberts
– Tony Wroten
Per NBC New York:
Those charged face a count of conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud.
According to the grand jury indictment, the defendants allegedly engaged in a widespread scheme from at least 2017 up to around 2020 to defraud the NBA Players’ Health and Welfare Benefit Plan by submitting fake reimbursement claims for medical and dental services that were never actually rendered.
Those allegedly fraudulent claims totaled about $3.9 million, from which the defendants got about $2.5 million in fraudulent proceeds, the indictment alleges.
Williams allegedly orchestrated the years-long scheme and recruited other NBA health plan participants to assist by offering them fake invoices to support their allegedly false health plan claims. He is accused of receiving kickback payments totaling at least $23,000 in return for providing the alleged false documentation.
The 34-year-old Williams also allegedly helped three co-defendants — Ronald Glen Davis, Charles Watson Jr. and Antoine Wright — obtain fake letters of medical necessity to justify some of the services on which the false invoices were based.
Williams also allegedly impersonated an individual who processed plan claims at one point in furtherance of his alleged scheme.