Insurance Fraud: 18 Former NBA Players Arrested After $4 Million Fraud Scheme

By Hikaru Y On Oct 7, 2021

On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that it had indicted 18 former National Basketball Association (NBA) players on charges they conspired to defraud an NBA health care plan of almost $4 million.

According to a federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan, from at least 2017 through last year, the scheme involved the submission of fraudulent claims for reimbursement of medical and dental treatments that had not been delivered.

The majority of the 18 players charged in the conspiracy played in the NBA in the late 1990s and 2000s. Ronald Glen Davis, a popular fan-favorite nicknamed “Big Baby,” was a member of the Boston Celtics team that won the league title in 2008.

Darius Miles and Sebastian Telfair, both of whom were picked out of high school, were among the players charged.

The complaint said that one of the former players, Terrence Williams, who played for the New Jersey Nets and Houston Rockets, was involved in arranging the conspiracy. The indictment claims that Williams also received $230,000 in payouts as a result of his role in the plan.

The complaint stated that the conspirators submitted claims of $3.9 million and received about $2.5 million in fraudulent funds.

The indictments were to be made public in New York later that day at a news conference hosted by Audrey Strauss, the Southern District of New York’s US attorney, and Michael J. Driscoll, the head of the FBI’s New York office.

Many of the implicated players, including Brown with the Knicks and Williams, Antoine Wright, and Chris Douglas-Roberts with the Nets, have spent at least part of their career in New York.

Others made fleeting sensations of popularity, such as Milton Palacio, who in 2000 hit a thrilling buzzer-beater against the Nets, or Ruben Patterson, who was dubbed the “Kobe Stopper” and claimed to be one of the few defenders capable of slowing down Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant.