Frauds and Swindling

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    Gotham F.C. Achieves Its Captain’s Dream of Victory

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    Ali Krieger played her last soccer game on Saturday. That was also the day when her team won the championship.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out how Gotham F.C. became the one New York area team to win a championship this year. We’ll also get details on what Donald Trump Jr. said in his second appearance in the civil fraud trial against his family and the Trump Organization.Ali Krieger celebrated with teammates after winning the N.W.S.L. Championship match on Saturday. Caroline Brehman/EPA, via ShutterstockOver the weekend Gotham F.C. became the one New York area team to win a championship this year. The team’s new president, Mary Wittenberg, said last month that it was already a big win to make the playoffs. I asked my colleague Claire Fahy, who has kept up with Gotham F.C. all year, to explain how the team accomplished what it did. Here’s what she said:Last year, Gotham F.C. finished 12th out of 12 teams in the National Women’s Soccer League. Last month, the team barely clinched the final spot in the playoffs on a chaotic “decision day,” when almost every team still had a chance at the playoffs and the decisive final games kicked off at the same time.But Gotham became comfortable in its role as spoiler, and the players seemed to believe that anything was possible. Their motivation was powerful: A loss at any stage of the playoffs would end the career of the team’s captain, Ali Krieger, 39, who had announced she would retire when the season was over. “It’s not Ali Krieger’s last game!” became the team’s rallying cry.Win or lose, Saturday’s match finally was Krieger’s last game. And in a storybook ending, Gotham F.C. beat Seattle’s O.L. Reign, 2-1.“You always dream of it that way, right?” Krieger said in an interview on Monday. “You always dream of envisioning yourself on a podium, with the trophy and with the confetti falling.”For Krieger, it was the end of a long road that wound through Germany and Sweden before bringing her back to the United States to help start the N.W.S.L., a career that reflected the struggle to establish a competitive American women’s soccer league. Along the way, she expanded the representation of L.G.B.T.Q. people in professional sports and fought for equal pay alongside her teammates on the U.S. women’s national squad.Gotham F.C. embodies how the N.W.S.L. has changed over the years. In 2018, the team, then called Sky Blue, became notorious for its poor training conditions, which included a lack of showers in the locker rooms, rotating practice fields with uneven grass and bunk beds in team-provided accommodations.Since then, the team has rebranded itself, improved its facilities and made hiring changes, including bringing in a new head coach, Juan Carlos Amorós, who was named N.W.S.L. Coach of the Year last week.And also last week, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, a member of the family that co-owns the New York Giants, announced that she would join Gotham as a minority owner. The team’s ownership includes Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey and his wife, Tammy Murphy, who together owned Sky Blue in 2018. In addition to Tisch Blodgett, the minority owners now include the W.N.B.A. legend Sue Bird, the former N.F.L. quarterback Eli Manning and the N.B.A. star Kevin Durant.The team will now be looking to build on the momentum of a winning season. Gotham’s average attendance — 6,300 people per game, up 42 percent this season from last — still lags behind league leaders like the San Diego Wave and Angel City F.C., which draw an average of 20,000 fans at each game.“This is going to be such a fun city for an organization to really thrive and start building a legacy in,” Krieger said.And now, she’s done something she had never done before — win an N.W.S.L. championship — while playing some of her best soccer. On Saturday, she stepped onto the podium and hoisted the trophy as confetti poured down, just as she had dreamed.“My career has been a gift,” she said, “and to really wrap it up with a bow at the end was just so phenomenal for me.”WeatherA mostly sunny day with temperatures reaching the low 50s. The evening will remain mostly clear, with temperatures in the mid-30s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Nov. 23 (Thanksgiving Day).The latest New York newsMark Makela for The New York TimesAmtrak service suspended: Amtrak train service on the line between New York City and Albany was again disrupted on Monday morning because of structural issues in a parking garage above the tracks in Midtown Manhattan.High school opt-out: New York could soon stop requiring many high school students to take Regents exams to earn a diploma, a major step in a sweeping overhaul of the state’s graduation system.Leaving Congress early: Representative Brian Higgins, who has spent 19 years in the House from a district that includes Buffalo and Niagara Falls, announced that he would step down in February, before his term ends. He called the Republican leadership of the House “the poster child for dysfunction right now.”Maryanne Trump Barry dies: The former federal judge was an older sister of Donald Trump and served as both his protector and his critic throughout their lives. She was 86.Donald Trump Jr., back on the witness standErin Schaff/The New York TimesDonald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, made a return appearance to testify in the civil fraud case against his father and the family business.He talked in bursts of hyperbole and platitudes. He described his father as a “visionary” and “an artist with real estate” who “creates things that other people would never envision.” He praised amenities including the Central Park views from Trump Tower and the vaults inside the company’s 40 Wall Street building.His testimony was intended to illustrate a key defense claim: The Trump holdings are extremely valuable, and the company’s annual financial statements, if anything, underrate them.New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, has accused the former president and other defendants, including Donald Jr. and his brother Eric, of fraudulently inflating the value of assets to obtain favorable loans and insurance deals. Donald Jr., in his first appearance on Nov. 1, testified that he had no direct involvement in the annual financial statements that Justice Arthur Engoron has already ruled were fraudulent.At times during the trial, Engoron has been impatient with the Trumps and their lawyers, particularly over responses he deemed rambling or indirect. But when lawyers from James’s team raised objections during Donald Jr.’s testimony on Monday, Engoron waved them aside. “Let him go ahead and talk about how great the Trump Organization is,” Engoron said at one point.Later in the day the judge told Donald Jr. to speak more slowly. “We like the enthusiasm, but try to eliminate the speed,” Engoron said.Donald Jr., who led off the family’s rebuttal to James’s accusations, was shown dozens of images of luxury properties — a deliberate contrast to the spreadsheets and emails that James’s team presented as it laid out its case.Trump talked about how the company had turned around moribund assets, including the Wollman Rink in Central Park and 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. In each case, Trump said the properties had fallen into disrepair and that no one had seen their potential — no one but his father.The company, however, no longer manages the ice rink. New York City moved to cut ties with the former president after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The Trumps also recently sold their lease on a public golf course in the Bronx, which did not stop the defense from playing a tourism video for the property during on Monday.As for 40 Wall Street, James says that the Trumps artificially inflated the value of the property, a 927-foot neo-Gothic tower, in part by claiming to have signed tenants who had yet to commit. METROPOLITAN diaryQuite a rideDear Diary:We were running late to meet friends for dinner at a restaurant in the West 50s.There were no taxis in sight, and the closest subway station was several blocks away. So we hopped into a pedicab and wove off through the early evening theater-district traffic.Eleven hair-raising minutes later, we arrived at the restaurant, almost on time.I tried to pay the driver with a credit card, but his card reader malfunctioned and couldn’t process the transaction. I gave him cash instead.A short time later, as we finished our pre-dinner cocktails, the hostess approached our table and asked if we had arrived in a pedicab. The driver, she said, was there and wanted to talk to me.He was waiting when I got to the front door. He said his card reader had started working again and that it had somehow processed my payment.He was there to give me my cash back.— Tom LippmanIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Geordon Wollner and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      4 People Accused of $13 Million in Pro Athlete Fraud Schemes

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      Prosecutors said the people, including a former N.B.A. agent, took money from professional basketball players and spent it on luxury goods and home renovations.Four people were arrested Thursday and charged with collectively defrauding four professional men’s basketball players out of more than $13 million, according to Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.In one scheme, three players were allegedly persuaded to purchase more than $5 million worth of life insurance policies at an enormous markup. In another, a fourth player spent $7 million to buy a women’s professional basketball team, but prosecutors said the money never went toward a purchase. In the third scheme, a player spent $1 million to fund a player representation agency that never existed, according to the indictment.“These defendants believed that defrauding their professional athlete clients of millions of dollars would be a layup,” Williams said in a statement. “That was a huge mistake, and they now face serious criminal charges for their alleged crimes.”Darryl Cohen, Brian Gilder, Charles Briscoe and Calvin Darden Jr. were each charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.Cohen, who was formerly a broker at Morgan Stanley, was also charged with one count of investment adviser fraud. Briscoe, who was formerly a certified N.B.A. agent, was also charged with one count of aggravated identify theft.Cohen, Gilder, Briscoe and Darden could not be reached for comment, and court filings did not list lawyers for any of them. Brandon Reif, a lawyer who previously represented Cohen, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.In a statement, Morgan Stanley, where Cohen worked from 2015 to 2021, said he had been “terminated” in March 2021 and had since been barred from the securities industry. “We fully cooperated with the investigation and have resolved clients’ claims related to Mr. Cohen,” a spokeswoman for the firm said.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also filed a civil complaint against Cohen.The identities of the professional athletes that prosecutors say were defrauded were not released. But many of the details of the life insurance scheme appear to match claims made by Jrue and Lauren Holiday, Chandler Parsons and Courtney Lee, who previously described allegations of being defrauded by Cohen to The New York Times.Jrue Holiday plays for the N.B.A.’s Milwaukee Bucks, and Lauren Holiday, his wife, is a former professional soccer player. Parsons and Lee are former N.B.A. players. They all said they had filed claims against Cohen with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees brokerage firms.According to the indictment, between about 2017 and 2020, Cohen and Gilder induced three N.B.A. players to purchase about $6.2 million in life insurance policies, from which Cohen and Gilder “secretly profited” about $4.5 million. Cohen allegedly gave about $200,000 of the money to a person with whom he was in a romantic relationship and used the other funds to pay off a former professional baseball player who was threatening to sue him, to pay his credit card bill, and to renovate his home, according to prosecutors.Another plan involved purchasing a women’s professional basketball team, according to the indictment. An N.B.A. player had wanted to purchase the team, but was forbidden from doing so by the N.B.A.’s collective bargaining agreement.The player discussed an “arrangement” with Briscoe, Darden and others, in which the player would indirectly buy the team through a company controlled by one of Darden’s relatives, prosecutors said. The player transferred $7 million to a bank account, which was controlled by Darden, to purchase the team. But instead, prosecutors said, Darden transferred more than $1 million to Briscoe and more than $500,000 to a relative, then spent the rest on cryptocurrencies, a house, luxury cars, art and a piano.Cohen, Briscoe and Darden are also accused of defrauding an N.B.A. player who wanted to start a player representation agency that he would run after he retired, according to court filings. The player gave Briscoe $1 million so the agency could pay expenses involved with signing a highly touted prospect. But prosecutors said the prospect never signed with the agency, and that the purported contract he signed was forged. The money allegedly was transferred to Briscoe, who paid off a debt and gave some of it to Darden, according to the indictment. More

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      Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini Acquitted of Fraud in Swiss Trial

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      Blatter, the former president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, and Platini, his onetime ally, were charged over a $2 million payment that prosecutors had labeled a bribe.Sepp Blatter, the former president of FIFA, and his onetime ally Michel Platini were acquitted of fraud on Friday in the latest attempt by Swiss prosecutors to win a conviction in a sprawling, seven-year investigation into corruption at the highest levels of world soccer.The trial, held in the southern Swiss city of Bellinzona, was related to a $2 million payment arranged in 2011 by Blatter, who led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years, to Platini, a former France player who was at the time the president of European soccer’s governing body and a potential heir to Blatter as the most powerful executive in the sport.Prosecutors had labeled the payment a bribe, saying that it was made around the time Blatter was standing for re-election. Blatter and Platini denied wrongdoing; they have long maintained that the money was owed to Platini for work done over several years.NEW | Ex FIFA supremo Sepp Blatter hails “victory” after being acquitted of fraud here in Switzerland pic.twitter.com/DjtYtARANY— Dan Roan (@danroan) July 8, 2022
      In a statement after the verdict, the court said that while there were “many well-founded suspicions” before the case was brought to trial, the versions presented by Blatter and Platini of what had occurred created “serious doubts” around the case made by prosecutors.And in another embarrassing blow for the Swiss authorities, the court ruled that Blatter and Platini were entitled to payment of about $20,000 for what it described as a moral injury. The court said Platini waived the payment, but that both men also would receive payments for their legal costs.A smiling Blatter was engulfed by news media as he left the courthouse. He raised both arms in the air, reminiscent of a gesture he used frequently during his days as FIFA president, to declare victory.“I am a happy man,” Blatter said, before thanking the judges. “They have analyzed the situation and they have explained why both of us haven’t done anything.”The criminal charges of fraud, criminal mismanagement and forgery against Blatter and Platini came after a multiyear investigation into the $2 million payment, which came to light in 2015 after prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice revealed corrupt practices at FIFA dating back at least two decades.The American investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction of dozens of powerful soccer officials and marketing executives on charges that included racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Blatter was not among those charged at the time, and while he has for years been the subject of various investigations, the fraud allegations over the payment to Platini marked the first time that he had actually been indicted on criminal charges.The failure to prove the charges against Blatter and Platini, though, shined yet more light on failures by the Swiss justice system to win convictions in cases related to the FIFA scandal. Swiss authorities had with great fanfare raided FIFA’s offices in 2015, shortly after the Justice Department unsealed its sweeping indictment outlining decades of corruption at soccer’s governing body, and Swiss prosecutors claim to have opened dozens of separate investigations into the organization’s activities.So far, however, they have successfully prosecuted only one former FIFA official, a banker and a Greek television executive. None of those defendants have faced prison sentences.The $2 million payment to Platini came as Blatter faced a strong challenge for the FIFA presidency from a Qatari billionaire, Mohamed bin Hammam, who at the time was head of soccer in Asia. Blatter and Platini both said that the money was a belated payment related to work that Platini, the captain of France’s 1984 European Championship-winning team, had done for Blatter after he was elected FIFA president for the first time, in 1998.Michel Platini outside court before the verdict. He said the ruling came “after seven years of lies and manipulation.”Arnd Wiegmann/ReutersDuring the trial, Blatter told the court that the money was part of a “gentlemen’s agreement” that he had made with Platini, who had agreed to advise him in return for about $1 million a year. The payment of the money would come “later,” Blatter said of their agreement.“When Mr. Blatter asked me to be his adviser, he asked me what salary I wanted,” Platini later testified. “I was surprised that he asked me this question and I said to him, ‘I want a million.’”Blatter, 86, and Platini, 67, had faced as much as five years in prison if convicted.Both men were eventually barred from the game by FIFA’s disciplinary system, though their original bans were later reduced on appeal. Those were to have expired in October, but a new suspension, imposed on Blatter on different grounds, took effect when it ended, meaning that he will be barred from the game until 2028, when he will be 92.After the verdict, Platini said that justice had been done “after seven years of lies and manipulation.”He has previously taken aim at the current FIFA management led by his former deputy, Gianni Infantino. Infantino vaulted from a place-holder candidate for FIFA’s presidency to its leader when Platini first faced accusations in 2015 and after Blatter resigned in the wake of the Justice Department investigation and arrests.Platini suggested that he would continue fighting to clear his name; he filed a criminal complaint against Infantino in April. “In this case, there are culprits who did not appear during this trial,” he said. “Let them count on me, we will meet again. Because I will not give up and I will go all the way in my quest for truth.”Blatter may be headed back to court, too. He faces the potential of another trial after the Swiss authorities informed him in June 2020 that he had been labeled an “accused person” in case involving the suspected misuse of funds after loaning $1 million to a soccer official in the Caribbean.That official, Jack Warner, has been fighting extradition to the United States after being named in the Justice Department’s indictment. More

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      Pro Athletes Say They Wanted Everyday Financial Advice but Got Cheated

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      A Morgan Stanley broker entrusted to make basic long-term investments was barred from the securities industry after his dealings with Jrue and Lauren Holiday, Chandler Parsons and others.Around the time that Lauren Holiday helped the United States soccer team win the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she and her husband, Jrue Holiday, the N.B.A. player, visited the Southern California office of a securities broker who had come highly recommended for making prudent long-term investments.Experienced? The broker had two decades with blue-chip firms like Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch. Connected? He said he specialized in assisting athletes in all sports, with a client list of 70 current and former pros.But instead of pursuing a “conservative to moderate investment strategy,” the Holidays now allege, the broker, Darryl M. Cohen, steered $2.3 million of their money to “dubious individuals and entities” — and now most of the money is gone.Other athletes said they had a similar experience. Chandler Parsons and Courtney Lee, who also played in the N.B.A., said that Cohen and Morgan Stanley improperly diverted $5 million and $2 million of their investments and that most of that money has similarly disappeared. So Parsons, Lee and the Holidays have filed claims against Morgan Stanley with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulatory organization known as FINRA which oversees brokerage firms.“I feel violated and taken advantage of,” Parsons said in a statement provided to The New York Times via Phil Aidikoff, a longtime securities lawyer in Beverly Hills, Calif., who represents the athletes as well as another claimant, in separate cases filed last year.Jrue Holiday with his daughter, Jrue Tyler, and wife, Lauren, in 2018.Max Becherer/The Advocate, via Associated PressThe athletes’ cases are still months away from being resolved through a settlement or an arbitration hearing. Yet FINRA, the industry regulators, in a separate but dramatic step last week, barred Cohen from the securities industry. By refusing to cooperate with FINRA’s own inquiry into the “improper use of customer funds,” FINRA said, Cohen had “stymied an investigation into very serious potential misconduct.”Officials at Morgan Stanley declined to comment. But in a regulatory filing, the firm said it had terminated Cohen in March 2021 because of allegations involving “transactions not disclosed to or approved by Morgan Stanley.”When reached on his cellphone, Cohen said, “I’ll get back with you.” He did not respond to a follow-up message, and his lawyer, Brandon S. Reif, said, “No comment.”FINRA cases are typically confidential, and documents are not publicly available. Aidikoff, citing pending litigation, declined to make his clients available for interviews to elaborate on their cases. Still, the fact that the athletes wanted to go public underscores their determination to “ensure it doesn’t happen to someone else,” Parsons said, and to encourage other possible victims to come forward.Lee said in a statement that he believed Morgan Stanley would put his interests first because it had been around for many years. “I was wrong,” he said.The Holidays, who have been active philanthropists, said: “We are all susceptible to being exploited by people like Darryl Cohen. We are disappointed that a company as well known as Morgan Stanley would enable someone like Mr. Cohen to be in a position that allowed him to move money out of our accounts the way that he did.”There is no shortage of stories about prominent athletes being duped or getting entangled in risky financial schemes. An Ernst & Young report last year found that professional athletes reported almost $600 million in fraud-related losses from 2004 to 2019. The “incidence of fraud in sports is trending in the wrong direction,” the report said.But Parsons, Lee and the Holidays are different, Aidikoff said, because they simply did what many ordinary investors often do: They relied on a big-name brokerage to make low-risk, long-term decisions.Jrue Holiday, 31, won an N.B.A. title with the Milwaukee Bucks and an Olympic gold medal with the U.S. basketball team in Tokyo last year. He signed a four-year extension in April 2021 for $134 million. He met his wife, then Lauren Cheney, while they were at U.C.L.A., and her soccer career led to endorsement deals with Under Armour and Chobani.Parsons, 33, a sharpshooter whose best seasons came with the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks, retired in January, two years after he was seriously injured in a car accident caused by a drunken driver. His last contract, signed in 2016, was a four-year deal worth $94 million, and he has been active in Los Angeles real estate.Lee, 36, last played for the Mavericks, his eighth team, in 2020, after signing a four-year, $48 million contract in 2016 with the Knicks. He had a serious calf injury in 2020, but played golf last summer in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with Parsons, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and others.Courtney Lee last played in 2020, for the Dallas Mavericks.Ron Jenkins/Associated PressThe athletes apparently heard about Cohen through basketball circles, including a former N.B.A. player who had also been an assistant coach, Aidikoff said.Cohen worked alongside his father, Marc Cohen, in the same Morgan Stanley branch in Westlake Village, Calif. His father has not been accused of wrongdoing, and remains with the firm, records show.The Holidays first met the younger Cohen in mid-2015. For Parsons, it was late 2015, and for Lee, it was sometime in 2017, according to their statements to FINRA.In mid-2020, a business adviser to Parsons noticed oddities about the Morgan Stanley investments. After Parsons contacted Aidikoff’s firm, lawyers discovered that Cohen and Morgan Stanley had apparently sent checks and wire transfers from Parsons’s accounts to questionable entities, including a purported charity which built a basketball court in Cohen’s backyard.All the athletes invested in life insurance policies based on deceptive information provided by Cohen, and used an accountant recommended by Cohen. But the accountant was actually an insurance salesman. And the person who signed the athletes’ tax documents — the insurance salesman’s father — was a lawyer who had never met or spoken with the athletes, Aidikoff said.Nyjer Morgan, center, settled a claim against Cohen in 2020.Mike McGinnis/Getty ImagesCohen has been the subject of a handful of other complaints, according to regulatory records. In March 2021, Nyjer Morgan, an outfielder who played for four Major League Baseball teams, settled a claim for $125,000 over the improper use of a “liquidity access line to loan funds to outside business entities.” One former client of Cohen’s, a retired professional athlete, told The Times that Cohen had won him over through word of mouth and then by a sales pitch over dinner that included laminated reports. But a year later, when the client noticed financial transactions that looked unfamiliar — and lost tens of thousands of dollars in the process — he was alarmed, and told his agent to immediately find another broker.“It’s painful and it doesn’t leave you,” said the athlete, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reliving a difficult private experience in the public eye.Susan C. Beachy More

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      Luka Doncic Autographs Questioned Among Collectors

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      Handwriting experts disagree about whether the N.B.A. star’s signatures could be from one person. And collectors have brewed a bigger conspiracy theory — that Doncic’s mother signed his cards.Luka Doncic can appear to lack no superpower on the basketball court, where the 22-year-old Slovenian star regularly treats N.B.A. fans to long-distance floaters, nutmeg passes and playoff fireworks. But cyber sleuths have been flummoxed by the inconsistency he displays during a more pedestrian task: writing his name.Many collectors believe that an elegant signature of Doncic’s name on the lone copy of a basketball card that sold for $4.6 million this year was written not by him, but by his mother. Like the signature seen on many of his other highly coveted trading cards, the blue script is not the tilting scribble Doncic used during his teenage years.Although player autographs evolve and handwriting analysis is subjective, the conjecture has become a powder keg for the sports card industry, which has thrived during the coronavirus pandemic.When live sports went silent last year, some people discovered the drama of watching others rip open expensive packs of cards on YouTube. Speculators stripped Target and Walmart shelves of lucrative boxes, flipping them for fivefold prices. Bolstered by stay-at-home orders and stimulus funds, the frenzy shared the get-rich-quick impulses that propelled cryptocurrency and meme stocks.Investors also flocked to grading companies, which by authenticating autographs and rating cards as pristine — sharp corners, smooth edges, perfect centering and an unmarred surface — can spin cardboard into gold. The demand was so great that Professional Sports Authenticator, which charges at least $150 to grade a card, temporarily refused most submissions.Few of the companies that benefited as money poured in to the collection industry are willing to discuss the ecosystem of athlete autographs, which are used as a key way to tantalize customers. Among collectors, autographed cards found within sealed packs are called “hits.”Luka Doncic signing autographs in 2019, during his rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesRumors of ghost signers spring every so often, with the signatures of workaday players and superstar athletes like Shaquille O’Neal and Cam Newton sometimes questioned. This summer, collectors were startled by apparent similarities between the autographs of the Charlotte Hornets teammates LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges. And the companies that make sports cards — and imprint them with a guarantee of authenticity — have acknowledged a few cases when athletes did not sign their own cards.“This whole thing is just an honor system,” Adam Gellman, who runs the blog Sports Cards Uncensored, said of how card companies like Panini obtain most of their autographs through the mail. “Historically, players have abused it to the nth degree.”Early doubts regarding Doncic’s signature were highlighted in an extensive Blowout Cards forum thread in early 2019, before the promising Dallas Mavericks rookie had generated the stream of triple-doubles that amplified fervor among collectors. The user who started the thread had previously identified fake basketball cards from the 1990s that were of such high quality that they had fooled grading companies.Card aficionados traced the evolution of Doncic’s autograph, debating whether the “Luka” signature he has used in person — which slants to the right, with narrow letters and significant peaks and valleys — could be from the same hand as the symmetrical, loopy cursive known as the “Lulu” signature. (There is a wide spectrum of universally accepted Doncic autographs, and not all “Lulu” signatures have drawn suspicion, but the questioned ones are in that script.)A signature from an Upper Deck Exquisite Collection card.The signature from the $4.6 million Doncic card.Matt ChaseIt is practically impossible to prove who signed a particular card; without video proof, not even a “Sasquatch” signature could be unequivocally discredited. Yet that has not stopped some collectors from speculating that Doncic’s mother is responsible for the “Lulu” signatures, which they describe as more feminine.There is zero evidence for that specific theory, which has become a pervasive inside joke in the industry, but the larger skepticism surrounding the “Lulu” autographs has persuaded some people to purge those versions of the cards from their collections.Doncic declined to comment, a Mavericks spokeswoman said.His mother, Mirjam Poterbin, said the idea that she had signed any of his cards was a crazy rumor. “I don’t even know how people can say things like this,” she said, adding, “He’s probably changing his writing — I don’t know. I don’t know.”Many star athletes, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Mahomes, have simplified their autographs, with the different signatures containing underlying consistencies, such as the relative heights and widths of letters. Skeptics of the “Lulu” signatures argue that it is unusual for an autograph to become neater and to take longer to write.Three forensic handwriting analysts with no ties to the sports industry disagreed when shown examples of the “Luka” and “Lulu” autographs. One said no determination about their authenticity could be made. One said they were unlikely to be written by the same person. And one said the signatures were generally consistent. A common thread, each expert said, was that the simple four-letter autograph would be easy to forge.The “Lulu” signatures are primarily on cards printed by Panini, which holds an exclusive license with the N.B.A. and directly reaches contracts with athletes for their autographs; it announced an exclusive deal with Doncic this year. Panini referred questions to a public relations agency, which did not answer inquiries about the authenticity of Doncic’s signatures, or how the company validates autographs.Several months after the buzzy forum thread in early 2019, Upper Deck, a Panini competitor, posted an Instagram video of Doncic signing cards in its Exquisite Collection. For several interested observers, the swift strokes that produced two long, angled consonants in “Luka” also sharpened Occam’s razor.“When we hear of issues where authenticity is being questioned, we like to do everything to let people know they’re getting the right thing,” said Chris Carlin, Upper Deck’s head of customer experience.Top rookies often sign cards at in-person promotional events. But it is otherwise common for athletes to privately sign sheets of stickers that will be affixed to cards, along with a legally binding affidavit that promises the autographs are theirs.When Upper Deck receives a stack of signed stickers through the mail, Carlin said, the company goes “through it with a fine-toothed comb,” rejecting those that have smeared in transit or that raise authenticity questions. “Usually we eliminate it before it ever gets out to the market,” he said.Yet there have been times when companies have recalled autographed cards. In 2017, Panini said that in “an extremely unfortunate situation,” N.F.L. defensive end Takkarist McKinley was not always the person who had signed his rookie cards “Takk.” Two months later, Panini recalled some cards of Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, announcing that it chose to remanufacture them “after being contacted by an autograph authenticator and following an internal quality control process.”Now the rumors about Doncic’s autographs have some collectors wary.When his official memorabilia website offered signed photos as a promotion last year, a Facebook thread was inundated with questions about their authenticity. The store, which is based in Slovenia and did not respond to requests for comment, dutifully responded that it had personally witnessed his autograph session.“Luka has really special way of signing,” it said in one reply. “If you compare Luka’s signature a year ago and today, yeah it’s different. It’s just the way he does it. Even his signature today is different then 8 months ago. Who knows with what he will surprise us in future.”Interest in Luka Doncic cards has risen alongside his star power in the N.B.A.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesDoncic was named the most valuable player of the Euroleague at age 19 and had immediate success in the N.B.A., making two All-Star teams after being named rookie of the year. This summer he led Slovenia to a fourth-place finish in its first Olympic basketball appearance.“He cares about one thing and one thing alone, and that’s winning,” said Doncic’s agent, Bill Duffy, who added that the athlete did not relish the growing off-court obligations.“Quite frankly,” he added, “everything else is just burdensome.”Asked directly whether someone other than Doncic was responsible for any of his autographs, Duffy said the accusation was “false” before deferring to a spokeswoman for the agency, who said, “There has been no fraud, whatever the word is, with any of these signings.”Collectors who agree that the “Lulu” signatures are legitimate point to a gift for the Slovenian president that features one, a skipped pen stroke that has been observed in both archetypes of autographs, and the fact that grading companies authenticate them.A spokeswoman for Beckett Grading Services said in an email that outside speculation about Doncic signatures did not influence its autograph experts, who consider “the letter shape and formation, the pen pressure, the flow, rhythm, conviction and spontaneity of the signature, and letter size and spacing to determine if it is consistent with known exemplars.” Professional Sports Authenticator declined to comment.Another common defense of the “Lulu” signatures is that the variations can be attributed to fatigue from frequent signings. Industry experts said that it took about an hour to sign 400 stickers and that Doncic might have signed at least 10,000 as a rookie.Gellman, who runs Sports Cards Uncensored, dismissed that explanation, noting that he once watched the quarterback Johnny Manziel replicate his intricate signature for four hours.“Athletes are required to sit and do this for so many parts of their life that it becomes secondhand to sign everything the same,” Gellman said.Ultimately, the rumblings about Doncic’s signature have not dulled the top end of his card market.Nick Fiorella, an entrepreneur who puts most of his disposable income into sports cards, said his riskiest purchase was the $4.6 million Doncic card with an N.B.A. logo and a “Lulu” autograph. But he is betting that the player and the hobby will continue to soar.“To me, if it’s him or his mom or whatever, it’s always going to be his one-of-one,” Fiorella said. “If he becomes a transcendent player, it doesn’t really matter if I signed it.”Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. More

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      18 Former N.B.A. Players Are Charged in $4 Million Insurance Fraud Scheme

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      Federal prosecutors said Glen Davis, Sebastian Telfair and Tony Allen were among the players involved in a plot to file millions of dollars’ worth of fraudulent medical claims.Greg Smith had been out of the National Basketball Association for about two years in December 2018, when the former power forward for the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks had what appeared to be a long day at a dental office in Beverly Hills. Invoices submitted on his behalf showed that he received IV sedation and root canals, and had crowns placed on eight teeth.But the invoices, totaling $47,900, were fake, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Thursday. Mr. Smith was actually thousands of miles from California, playing basketball in Taiwan at the time, the prosecutors said, adding that they had evidence to prove it, including box scores showing he had appeared in games there.Mr. Smith was one of 18 former N.B.A. players who were charged in what federal authorities portrayed as a brazen conspiracy to defraud a health care program extended to current and former N.B.A. players.The claims submitted by another defendant, Sebastian Telfair — a Brooklyn high school legend who went on to a journeyman’s professional career — suggested truly woeful dental problems. His claims showed he had received root canals on 17 teeth in a year’s time, the indictment said. He pleaded not guilty on Thursday and was released on bond.“The defendant’s playbook involved fraud and deception,” Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference on Thursday announcing the charges.“Their alleged scheme has been disrupted and they will have to answer for their flagrant violations of law,” Ms. Strauss said.She and Michael J. Driscoll, the head of the F.B.I.’s New York office, each added that the investigation was continuing.The prosecutors said that the former players — and one player’s spouse who was also charged — submitted claims totaling $3.9 million, and they ultimately received about $2.5 million in fraudulent proceeds.While none of the defendants were superstars, several were well-known players, like the defensive stalwart Tony Allen, and Ronald Glen Davis, who went by his middle name and was nicknamed “Big Baby.” Both played on the Boston Celtics team that won the N.B.A. championship in 2008. Another defendant, Terrence Williams, who prosecutors said had orchestrated the scheme, found some success during his college years at the University of Louisville but had an unremarkable professional career after being drafted in the first round by the New Jersey Nets in 2009.Mr. Williams also received kickbacks of at least $230,000 from 10 of the former players accused of participating in the scheme, the indictment said. The defendants were each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, and Mr. Williams was also charged with aggravated identity theft. The conspiracy count carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, the government said. Lawyers for many of the defendants could not immediately be identified on Thursday for comment. Mr. Telfair’s lawyer, Deborah A. Colson, declined to comment.In a statement, the N.B.A. called the allegations “particularly disheartening” and said it would cooperate fully with the investigation. The league’s players union said it was aware of the indictment and was monitoring the case.According to the indictment, Mr. Williams first submitted a fraudulent claim seeking reimbursement of $19,000 for services he purportedly received from a chiropractor in Encino, Calif. After the claim was approved and he received $7,672, he began to recruit others, the indictment said.Some of the medical claims made by the former players were identical, straining credulity, prosecutors suggested.Mr. Davis, Mr. Allen and a third defendant, Tony Wroten, for example, all claimed to have had root canals on the same six teeth on the same date in April 2016 — and crowns on those teeth a month later, the indictment said.Some of the claims filed as part of the scheme resulted in large reimbursements, prosecutors said. Four of the former players were each paid more than $200,000 after claiming to have visited the same chiropractor Mr. Williams had, according to the indictment. One of the four, Shannon Brown, received $320,000. Glen Davis, a fan favorite during a long career in the N.B.A., was among 18 former players charged by federal prosecutors.Tim Warner/BIG3, via Getty ImagesBut the nearly $4 million that prosecutors said the defendants sought in the scheme is still a fraction of the tens of millions of dollars some of those indicted earned in their N.B.A. careers. Several of the defendants played at least part of their career for New York-area teams, including Mr. Brown with the Knicks, and Mr. Williams, Antoine Wright and Chris Douglas-Roberts with the Nets.Mr. Telfair, a cousin of the former N.B.A. star Stephon Marbury, graced magazine covers as one of the best high school players in the country when he played at Brooklyn’s Lincoln High School in the early 2000s, even appearing beside a teenage LeBron James on a cover of Slam magazine in 2002. But he was dogged by legal troubles related to weapons during his professional career, which included early stints with the Portland Trail Blazers and the Celtics.In 2008, Mr. Telfair pleaded guilty to illegal handgun possession and was sentenced to three years’ probation. In 2019, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for gun possession, this time stemming from an arrest two years earlier, when he was found with four loaded guns and a bulletproof vest. The indictment unsealed on Thursday noted that in order to receive benefits from the health care program, players were required to have spent at least three seasons on an N.B.A. team roster. That may be one reason the names of many of those charged in the scheme prompted recognition, and even nostalgia, from dedicated N.B.A. fans — for whom they were like memorable, if minor, character actors.Among those indicted was Milton Palacio, a former Boston Celtic, who in 2000 hit a wild buzzer beater against the Nets after stealing a pass. Now an assistant coach for the Portland Trail Blazers, Mr. Palacio was placed on administrative leave after the charges were announced, according to a statement from the team.The defendants also included promising prospects whose careers did not reach the heights that had been expected, like Darius Miles and Mr. Telfair, who were each drafted out of high school. And there was Ruben Patterson, who spent his rookie year with the Los Angeles Lakers and was said — perhaps apocryphally — to have called himself the “Kobe Stopper,” for his supposed ability to slow down Kobe Bryant when Mr. Patterson guarded him later in their careers.Perhaps the most accomplished player to be indicted was Mr. Allen, who made a number of all-defensive teams between 2011 and 2017. Next year, he is scheduled to have his number retired by the Memphis Grizzlies.Sopan Deb More

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      Clinton Portis, Former NFL Players Plead Guilty to Defrauding Insurance Plan

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      Clinton Portis was among 15 people who pleaded guilty in a scheme to bilk an insurance fund that repays retired players for out-of-pocket medical care expenses.Clinton Portis, the former star running back in Washington and Denver, and two other former N.F.L. pros pleaded guilty for their roles in a wide-ranging effort to defraud a health care benefit program for retired players, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Portis and Tamarick Vanover pleaded guilty on Friday, while Robert McCune, a ringleader of the scheme, entered his plea on Aug. 24.In all, 15 people have pleaded guilty to taking part in a plan to defraud the Gene Upshaw N.F.L. Player Health Reimbursement Account Plan, which repays former players for out-of-pocket medical care expenses up to $350,000.The N.F.L. declined to comment. The N.F.L. Players Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.According to court documents, Portis submitted fraudulent claims for nearly $100,000 in medical equipment that was never delivered. Vanover recruited three other former N.F.L. players and helped them file false claims for almost $160,000 total.McCune, the Justice Department said, orchestrated the fraud, which included submitting about $2.9 million in false claims, for which the plan paid out about $2.5 million between June 2017 and April 2018.Cigna, the insurance company that administers the plan, detected claims for expensive medical equipment that raised alarms. According to Portis’s plea deal, a claim from January 2018 included Portis and McCune seeking reimbursement of $44,732 for a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. In another, from March 2018, they asked for a reimbursement of $54,532 for a cryotherapy sauna. Portis, the plea deal said, was “aware of a high probability that the claims McCune submitted on his behalf were false and fraudulent and deliberately ignored that fact.”Portis and Vanover pleaded guilty two days after jurors in their case could not reach a verdict, and a mistrial was ruled on some of the counts against Vanover. A retrial had been scheduled to begin this week.The two former players will be sentenced in January and each face up to 10 years in prison, but will most likely receive far less, based on sentencing guidelines.Jeffrey Darling, a lawyer who represents Vanover, said in an interview that his client decided to plead guilty despite the hung jury in the first trial, because jurors had voted 11 to 1 to convict. In a second trial, “we might not have been able to pull it off again,” Darling said.Darling said Vanover admitted in a settlement that he had provided the personal information of three former N.F.L. players to Reche Caldwell, another former player who worked with McCune to file fake claims. However, “the government was unable to produce any evidence at trial that Mr. Vanover personally facilitated the filing of the claims or that he received any money himself,” Darling said in a written statement.Portis’s lawyer declined to comment.McCune pleaded guilty at the beginning of the trial to all the charges he faced, including multiple counts of health care fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He will be sentenced on Nov. 19 and could face what amounts to a life sentence, if all the charges against him are included.Five other former N.F.L. players were indicted, including former New Orleans Saints receiver Joe Horn. His son Jaycee, a cornerback, was drafted in the first round in April by the Carolina Panthers.Horn and 11 other defendants charged in the case pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. One of them, Caldwell, died in June 2020.Portis, 40, was by far the best known of the players. Drafted in the second round in 2002 by the Denver Broncos, he was voted Offensive Rookie of the Year. He played 113 games in Denver and Washington and retired in 2010.McCune, 42, was drafted in 2005 and played eight games at linebacker for Washington and the Baltimore Ravens.Vanover, 47, was drafted in 1995 by Kansas City. He played 77 games at receiver for Kansas City and the Chargers.All of the men were originally charged in December 2019. More