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The sentence was announced last Friday in New York City.
On Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s of the Southern District of New York announced that former Washington Wizards player Alan Anderson was sentenced to 24 months, or two years in prison for his role in a health benefits scheme to defraud the NBA Players’ Health and Welfare Benefit Plan. In addition, Keyon Dooling was sentenced to 30 months, or two-and-a-half years in prison. Anderson was also ordered to forfeit $121,000 and pay restitution of the same amount.
In the scheme, Anderson, Dooling and other players involved would submit invoices for medical and dental services that weren’t as described, or not at all. This lasted from 2017-19.
For example, reimbursement requests were made on dates from doctor’s offices where the patients (players or their families) weren’t at on the supposed date of service. In more concrete terms, let’s say a reimbursement request said that someone had a medical procedure last Tuesday, Feb. 14 at 11 a.m. ET in Washington, DC. However, that person is in Seattle for a work conference at 8 a.m. PT (the same time as 11 a.m. ET) which is confirmed by the conference hosts, travel invoices and/or cell phone records.
Clerical errors happen. But when it happens too much, the Feds are certainly going to take notice.
Anderson was one of the bigger recruiters in the scheme. When insurance companies began to push back on reimbursement requests, he encouraged the submission of forged letters and even a visit with a doctor to justify the requests.
There are multiple defendants involved in the scheme when it was first announced in 2021. Will Bynum, another former NBA player who also played for the Wizards (2015), was charged. However, there is no news about the status of his situation. Anderson played for Washington from 2015-16.
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