Sebastian Telfair, the former teen basketball phenom who was hyped nearly as intensely as LeBron James in high school, has pleaded guilty to running a big-money scam on the NBA.
Telfair, now 37, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to defrauding the NBA’s health care plan on Wednesday, March 15, 2023. Telfair was one of nearly two dozen people, including 18 former NBA players, that the U.S. Department of Justice indicted after the FBI completed its probe in 2022.
According to the FBI and the DOJ, the 18 ex-ballers and the wife of a former player ran a scheme led by Terrence Williams, a former first-round pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. As the leader, Williams reportedly recruited Telfair and other participants to the multimillion-dollar scheme. Williams gave them “false invoices provided by a dentist in California, a doctor in Washington state and several non-medical professionals in exchange for kickbacks” for submitting false dental and medical claims.
As it stands, Telfair, one of the most hyped young hardwood stars ever from New York – he once held the record for the most career points ever in the history of NYC high schools – now faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on Aug. 1.
The guilty plea brings to close the sad saga of a former b-ball prodigy who once graced the cover of SLAM magazine with fellow high school superstar King James. They were hyped by basketball pundits as the players who would take over the league.
Welp. Slam magazine got this half right … #SebastianTelfair #LeBronJames pic.twitter.com/5JJHxI5KEH
— Tex (@DavidCcu03) October 30, 2014
King James and Telfair provide a startling dichotomy of careers as their adulthoods could not have been more divergent. Both James and Telfair opted to skip college and go straight to the pros. King James was picked No. 1 in the 2003 NBA Draft and Telfair went in the first round to the Portland Trailblazers the following year. But that’s where their similarities end.
LBJ went on to become the greatest NBA player of his era and arguably the best in NBA history – though most fans and players still side with Michael Jordan as the GOAT.
Telfair, conversely, was considered a lackluster disappointment and became an NBA nomad who played for eight different NBA teams in 10 years, mostly sitting on the bench.
This conviction only adds to Telfair’s personal and legal woes. He was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2019 after being found guilty on a gun charge, according to The Bleacher Report. Telfair told the judge that he participated in the NBA insurance fraud in order to pay for his divorce and his legal fees related to the gun case.
Unfortunately for Telfair, the court upheld the sentence in the gun case in October 2022, and now Telfair will learn how many more years he has to serve from the NBA scam conviction this August.
A look at the heartbreaking career and personal life of Telfair is chronicled below: