Ex-NBA Player Darius Miles Pleads Guilty in Sprawling Healthcare Fraud Scheme

Former NBA player Darius Miles pleaded guilty Monday to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare and wire fraud for his role in a healthcare fraud scheme that targeted the league's benefits program. 

Miles entered the guilty plea at a brief hearing before Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan Federal Court. 

The former Los Angeles Clipper, who was selected third in the 2000 NBA draft, was charged by federal prosecutors in 2022 alongside a doctor, a dentist and other former NBA players for the health care scheme. 

Terrence Williams, a former NBA player who pleaded guilty in August 2022, orchestrated the scheme to submit fraudulent healthcare claims for reimbursement from the NBA’s players’ health and welfare benefit plan, prosecutors charged. 

More than a dozen people, including former players, family members, a doctor and a dentist engaged in the scheme that siphoned off $5 million from the benefit plan which provides care to current and retired players, federal authorities charged. 

Former New York City high school basketball standout Sebastian Telfair was also charged and pleaded guilty for his role in the scheme in March. 

Telfair, who previously played for the Portland Trailblazers and the Boston Celtics, told Judge Caproni he engaged in the scheme because he needed money for legal fees in an unrelated case, Bloomberg reported. 

Both Telfair and Miles face up to 20 years in prison at their sentencing.

At the hearing Monday, Miles, 41, admitted to the judge that "in 2019 I agreed with another person to submit false claims to the NBA’s health care plan."

Despite earning more than $60 million during in NBA career, Miles has experienced a series of financial troubles and filed for bankruptcy in 2016. He was also arrested in 2011 for carrying a loaded gun at St. Louis International Airport.

Miles detailed some of his downfall in a 2018 op-ed for The Players' Tribune, writing: "When you’re young, you think the money is gonna last forever. I don’t care how street smart you are, or who you got in your corner, when you go from not having anything to making millions of dollars at 18, 19 years old, you’re not going to be prepared for it."

"The cliche is that guys go broke buying Ferraris or whatever," he added. "Listen, it takes a long time to go broke buying Ferraris. What makes you go broke are shady business deals."

Miles also wrote about struggling with depression, especially after his mother died, and said in the aftermath of her death he worried he was going to wind up in jail.

"I’m just trying to get better, day by day. Trying to be a better person, day by day," he wrote.