This is a story that has kind of been developing for a while. Here’s a quick recap for those of you who may not have been following along. Essentially ex-NBA players are entitled to get insurance coverage from the league. At least a dozen of these players are being investigated for potentially defrauding the league out of millions of dollars. What they were doing was booking different medical procedures that they would bill the league for. Obviously, they never got those medical procedures, and just kept the cash. What they made up though wasn’t all that believable and that’s why they got caught!
It’s Not Like These Guys Needed The Cash
The weirdest thing about the whole ordeal is the fact that most of the players on the list essentially shouldn’t be needing the money. At least not the type of money that they were allegedly stealing from the league. In these initial findings a total of 18 former NBA players are being investigated. The scheme was reportedly started by former New Jersey Nets guard Terrence Williams. Combined the 18 players made a total of 360 million dollars throughout their careers. This issue has them defrauding the league for no more than 5 million dollars.
Trying to wrap my head around this NBA fraud thing and have decided that I should probably stop trying to make sense of it.
— Luke Bonner (🛩, 🏀) (@LukeyBonner) October 7, 2021
If You’re Going To Cheat Do It Right
Insurance fraud is a common get-rich-quick scheme that different people have tried their hand at over the years. This operation was run particularly poorly. At least that’s what we can gather from the indictment that was presented against these former players. Basically it says that the papers they filled to cash the checks for procedures they never had done were poorly written and formatted. At one point the name of the ex player who was part of the fraud was even spelled wrong. The official document reads,
“[The] letters are unusual in several respects: they are not on letterhead, contain unusual formatting, have grammatical errors, and one of the letters misspells a purported patient’s name,”
https://twitter.com/GlennFarleyK5/status/1446239685840236559
A Dental Clinic In Beverly Hills Could Be Involved In The Scheme
Another issue that potentially raised eyebrows and may lead to getting these former NBA players in real trouble, was that different players presented papers from the same dental clinic in Beverly Hills. Also, the players were not careful enough to justify the procedures that they had undergone. Essentially they told the teacher that their grandmother had died 4 times in the semester! Manhattan US attorney Audrey Strauss who is leading the case against the players mentioned on the claims,
“Reimbursement documents provided by Williams and submitted by two of the defendants falsely showed that they had undergone 13 root canals and 12 crowns on the exact same teeth and on the exact same date,”
Their Alibis Don’t Help Either
You’re innocent until proven guilty, but the case against these former players seems to get worse and worse. Particularly for players like Gregory Smith, and Ronald Glen Davis, who went as “Big Baby” in his playing days. They were part of the players that coincidently visited the same Beverly Hills dental clinic. Smith submitted a claim for around 48k while Davis put in a more conservative 27k bill.
The problem for both of them was that neither of them was in the country when those claims were filed! Smith was in fact playing for a pro basketball team in Taiwan. Davis was on a vacation in Paris! These guys are in hot water big time.
