The DOJ announced that former NBA player, Terrence Williams, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in a health care fraud scheme. Williams previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
According to the DOJ, Williams defrauded the NBA’s health and welfare benefit plan (“Plan”) from approximately 2017 through 2021. The Plan provides benefits to active and former players, along with their families. Williams and his co-conspirators submitted fraudulent medical and dental claims for services they never received. Williams recruited doctors, dentists, and other non-medical professionals to participate in this scheme. He provided his co-defendants with false invoices that he received from doctors and non-medical professionals, also a part of the scheme, to support fraudulent claims. William also created fraudulent letters of medical necessity and created an email account to impersonate the Plan’s administrative manager.
Williams and his co-defendants submitted false claims totaling approximately $5 million. Williams received approximately $300,000 in kickback payments in exchange for submitting false claims to the Plan for other co-conspirators. Williams received $346,000 from a co-defendant doctor after threatening to alert authorities about the fraudulent invoices he submitted. Williams also threatened potential witnesses while on pretrial release in April 2022.
U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni sentenced Williams to 10 years in federal prison and 3 years of supervised release. In addition, Williams was ordered to forfeit $653,672.55 and pay $2,500,000 in restitution. After Williams was sentenced, U.S. Attorney Damien Williams commented that “Williams led a wide-ranging scheme to steal millions of dollars from the NBA Players’ Health and Welfare Benefit Plan […]. For his brazen criminal acts, Williams now faces years in prison.”
The attorneys at Chilivis Grubman represent clients of all types and sizes in connection with white-collar criminal and health care fraud matters. If you need assistance with such a matter, please contact us today.