The former NBA All-Star pleaded guilty Friday to being the linchpin of a disorderly scheme that stole $5 million from the league’s health plan.
First-round draft pick Terrence Williams, 35, from Louisville, Kentucky, who spent six NBA seasons with the Nets, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings, and Boston Celtics, persuaded his teammates to submit fake bills. Admitted to providing a fake invoice. in exchange for a massive rebate from 2017 to his 2021.
Williams, one of 18 former NBA players, including Coney Island’s Sebastian Telfair, was charged in October with collecting fraudulent payments for medical and dental services he never received. Did.
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The National Basketball Player Health and Benefits Plan serves current and former players and their families.
“Williams spearheaded a scheme involving more than 18 former NBA players, dentists, doctors and chiropractors to defraud millions of dollars from NBA players’ health and welfare benefit plans. I impersonated him and helped him get something that didn’t belong to him: money that belonged to the plan,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
Williams, of Seattle, Washington, was remanded to Federal Prison Service custody during his pretrial release in May after prosecutors accused him of intimidating witnesses in the case.
He allegedly emailed unnamed witnesses stating they were “talking”[o] f— a lot” and warned them to “shut up f—“. “I spit in your face is exactly what you see,” he said in a separate letter, according to federal officials.
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Retired Boston Celtic admitted to receiving kickbacks of around $230,000 for pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit health care, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Among the people he recruited were doctors from California and Washington.
According to the federal government, the scheme masterminded by Williams was unsophisticated, and participants made little effort to make the fake documents look real. The fake doctor letters submitted to NBA Healthcare his plan were often riddled with typos, appeared on pages without letterhead, and had names misspelled.
Another mistake included charging an in-state service fee for a period the NBA knew the player wasn’t traveling.
Williams is the sixth person indicted to reach a plea bargain with prosecutors. The Justice Department charged everyone but him with his one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud. Brooklyn’s Telfair, along with his two others, have maintained their innocence.
In an April indictment, prosecutors charged William Washington, Keyon Doering, and Aamir Wahab as a doctor, a basketball security guard, and a dentist, respectively.
Williams will be sentenced on January 25 and will face up to 20 years in prison. His plea bargain also requires that he pay $2.5 million for his plans for NBA health care and that the government confiscate more than $653,000 of him. His attorney, David Stern, did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
Two NBA representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
