A onetime NBA all-star pleaded responsible Friday to serving because the linchpin in a sprawling scheme that bilked the league’s medical health insurance plan out of $5 million.
Terrence Williams, 35, a first-round draft choose from Louisville, Ky., who spent six seasons within the NBA with the Nets, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings, and Boston Celtics, admitted to offering his teammates with faux invoices to submit phony claims in trade for large kickbacks between 2017 and 2021.
Williams is one in all 18 former NBA gamers, together with Coney Island’s Sebastian Telfair, who prosecutors indicted in October for gathering the crooked payouts for medical and dental providers they by no means obtained.
The Nationwide Basketball Gamers’ Well being and Welfare Profit Plan gives providers to present and former gamers and their households.
“Williams led a scheme involving greater than 18 former NBA gamers, a dentist, a physician and a chiropractor to defraud the NBA Gamers’ Well being and Welfare Profit Plan of tens of millions of dollars. Williams additionally impersonated others to assist him take what was not his — cash that belonged to the Plan,” mentioned U.S. Legal professional Damian Williams.
Williams, of Seattle, Wash., was remanded to the federal Bureau of Prisons’ custody whereas on pretrial launch in Could after prosecutors accused him of threatening a witness within the case.
He allegedly emailed an unnamed witness to say they had been “speaking solution to[o] f—ing a lot” and warned them to “shut the f— up.” In one other missive, he mentioned, “me spitting in your face is strictly what you’ll see,” in response to federal authorities.
In pleading responsible to conspiracy to commit well being care and wire fraud and aggravated id theft, the retired Boston Celtic admitted to receiving about $230,000 in kickbacks. Amongst these he recruited had been docs in California and Washington, who despatched him their places of work’ medical invoices to fill out with lies.
The scheme Williams masterminded was unsophisticated, in response to the feds, with individuals usually placing little effort into making faux paperwork look actual. Counterfeit docs’ letters submitted to the NBA healthcare plan had been usually riddled with typos, offered on pages with out letterhead, and had misspelled names.
In different slipups, gamers billed for providers in states during times the NBA knew they hadn’t traveled.
Williams is the sixth particular person charged within the indictment to succeed in a plea take care of prosecutors. The Justice Division charged everybody however him with one rely of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. Telfair, of Brooklyn, maintains his innocence together with two others.
Prosecutors charged three others — William Washington, Keyon Dooling and Aamir Wahab — a physician, a basketball guard and a dentist, respectively, in a superseding indictment in April.
Williams is due in courtroom for his sentencing on Jan. 25 and faces as much as 20 years on the highest rely. His plea settlement additionally requires he pay the NBA healthcare plan $2.5 million and forfeit greater than $653,000 to the federal government. His lawyer David Stern didn't instantly return a name searching for remark.
Two NBA representatives didn't instantly reply to requests for remark.
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