[ad_1]
The US Lawyer’s Workplace introduced Thursday that former NBA player Terrence Williams has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for defrauding the league’s well being and welfare profit plan out of greater than $5 million.
Williams has been incarcerated in Brooklyn because the spring of 2022 after he threatened witnesses in his case.
Williams, who performed for the New Jersey Nets, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings and Boston Celtics in his profession, pleaded responsible final 12 months to conspiracy to commit well being care and wire fraud, in addition to aggravated identification theft.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
“Williams led a wide-ranging scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from the NBA Gamers’ Well being and Welfare Profit Plan,” U.S. legal professional Damian Williams said in a statement. “Williams recruited medical professionals and others to increase his felony conspiracy and maximize his ill-gotten beneficial properties. Williams not solely lined his pockets via fraud and deceit, however he additionally stole the identities of others and threatened a witness to additional his felony endeavors. For his brazen felony acts, Williams now faces years in jail.”
The well being and welfare profit plan offers advantages to eligible lively and former gamers within the NBA in addition to relations. Nonetheless, Williams abused this plan from “not less than 2017 via not less than 2021,” as he created a scheme that concerned “greater than a dozen others” by submitting fraudulent claims for reimbursement of medical and dental companies that weren’t rendered.
Williams was the orchestrator of this defrauding plan, offering false invoices to the others taking part in his scheme. A few of his co-defendants embrace a dentist and docs in California and Washington state, the assertion mentioned.
Williams was considered one of 18 former NBA gamers who had been indicted in 2021. He additionally impersonated a well being plan worker and would threaten gamers who didn’t give him a kickback cost of not less than $300,000.
Keyon Dooling and Alan Anderson had been additionally among the many former NBA gamers concerned within the scheme.
Paperwork discrepancies ultimately received Williams caught, as former NBA middle Gregory Smith reportedly submitted a declare to the well being and welfare profit plan for dental work he had achieved in Beverly Hills in 2018, per CBS Information. Nonetheless, Smith was by no means in California on the time, as he was taking part in within the Tremendous Basketball League in Taiwan.
On high of his jail sentence, the 36-year-old Williams was sentenced to a few years of supervised launch and ordered to forfeit $653,672.55 in addition to restitution of $2.5 million.
Williams was the eleventh total choose by the Nets popping out of Louisville within the 2009 NBA Draft. He lasted only a season-and-a-half with the Nets earlier than he was dealt to the Rockets in the course of the 2010-11 season.
Williams was moved to the Kings in the course of the subsequent season, and after a 2012-13 marketing campaign with the Celtics, he by no means broke again into the league.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Over 153 profession video games, Williams averaged 7.1 factors, 2.4 assists, 3.6 rebounds and shot 41.2% from the sphere.
Source link