18 former NBA players were charged with defrauding the league’s health and welfare benefit plan in a scam.
“The defendants’ playbook involved fraud and deception,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss told a news conference after FBI agents across the country arrested 15 ex-players and one of their wives in a three-year conspiracy that authorities say started in 2017.
Former NBA players arrested submitted false root canal procedures on the same teeth, on the same day, at the same location looool pic.twitter.com/KOQkYj0SVk
— gifdsports (@gifdsports) October 7, 2021
The indictment accuses them of submitting fraudulent claims to get reimbursed for medical and dental procedures that never happened. The indictment also says that prosecutors have travel records, email and GPS data to prove that they were sometimes far from the medical and dental offices not even in the same state or country as the medical practices they claimed they were being treated at.
Strauss said each defendant made false claims for payments that ranged from $65,000 to $420,000.
18 former NBA players arrested on healthcare fraud charges. pic.twitter.com/l8zdUc3DND
— packdrip (@packdrip) October 7, 2021
The defendants 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, was the only women charged.
