18 former NBA players have been indicted by the Manhattan federal court for insurance fraud against the league’s Health and Wealthfare Benefit Plan. 

The players, which include Terrence Williams, Alan Wanderson, Anthony Allen, and Shannon Brown, attempted to steal $4 million from the plan in a health insurance fraud scheme and were all charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, while Williams was additionally charged with aggravated identity theft. 

According to the grand jury indictment, the scheme has been ongoing for several years, starting in 2017 and ending in 2020.

The scheme was allegedly started by Willaims and consisted of the players sending in fake reimbursement claims for medical services. The fake invoices totaled to $3.9 million, and the players received a total of $2.5 million from them.

Williams recruited other players into the scheme and provided them with fake invoices from a chiropractor and dentist. 

Court documents state that the invoices eventually exposed them because “they are not on letterhead, they contain unusual formatting, [and] they have grammatical errors.”

The documents also state that the invoices were sent on the exact same date from several different offices. For example, Ronald Glen Davis, Anthony Allen, and Tony Wroten all had root canals on the same exact teeth on the same exact date.

“The defendant’s playbook involved fraud and deception. Their alleged scheme has been disrupted and they will have to answer for their flagrant violations of law,” said Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Meanwhile, the NBA has released a statement saying, “The benefit plans provided by the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association to our players are critically important to support their health and well-being throughout their playing careers and over the course of their lives, which makes these allegations particularly disheartening.”

By Alexandria Kim