{"id":620431,"date":"2026-02-23T19:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/620431\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:25:10","slug":"ex-morgan-stanley-advisors-trial-for-ripping-off-nba-players-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/620431\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Morgan Stanley advisor\u2019s trial for ripping off NBA players continues."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                    From left: Jrue Holiday, Chandler Parsons, Courtney Lee. Image source: Wikimedia Creative Commons\n                <\/p>\n<p>\n                Darryl Cohen allegedly used clients\u2019 money to build a gym in the backyard of his home.\u00a0\n            <\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:11px\">A former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmentnews.com\/companies\/morgan-stanley\/262940\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Morgan Stanley<\/a> financial advisor is fighting charges in federal court in Manhattan that he defrauded <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmentnews.com\/practice-management\/gambling-story-monday\/262825\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">NBA players<\/a> out of millions of dollars when he sold them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmentnews.com\/regulation-legal-compliance\/sec-claims-calif-b-d-and-advisor-biggest-sellers-of-gwg-bonds-violated-reg-bi-emerson-equity-and-its-advisor-tony-barouti-were-likely-the-largest-sellers-of-defunct-gwg-l-bonds\/261682\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">viatical settlements<\/a>, a complex investment product that allows individuals with a limited life expectancy to sell their life insurance to another person or group.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The advisor, Darryl Cohen, along with three other people, was charged in March 2023 with six counts for schemes to defraud professional basketball players, according <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-sdny\/pr\/financial-advisor-financial-planner-nba-agent-and-previously-convicted-fraudster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">to a statement from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office<\/a>, the southern district of New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As part of his scheme Cohen allegedly transferred $500,000 from the accounts of two professional basketball players as purported donations to a non-profit organization, according to federal charges. He then used approximately $238,000 of those funds to build athletic training facilities in the backyard of his home.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Cohen was registered with Morgan Stanley in the Los Angeles suburbs from 2016 to 2021, according to his BrokerCheck profile, when the firm \u201cdischarged,\u201d or fired him. The same year FINRA barred him from the securities industry.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen\u2019s trial began at the end of last month and federal prosecutors last Thursday rested their case, according to an article by Law360. The NBA players who were the targets of Cohen\u2019s alleged scheme included Jrue Holiday, Chandler Parsons and Courtney Lee, according to the article.<\/p>\n<p>From 2017 through 2020 Cohen managed a scheme to defraud three different professional basketball player clients of over $5 million by taking advantage of his advisory and fiduciary relationships with those clients, according to the federal charges.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen conspired with Brian Gilder, an independent financial planner whom Cohen \u201cencouraged his clients to work with and who assisted in tax preparation,\u201d according to the federal allegations.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen and Gilder allegedly fraudulently induced three athletes to purchase viatical life insurance policies at massive markups of 222%, 310%, and 244%, respectively, without disclosing Gilder controlled the transaction, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen and Gilder also allegedly used a sports agency and another law firm to channel approximately $328,125 of one of his client\u2019s money to repay a former professional baseball player, a disgruntled client.<\/p>\n<p>In February 2020, in the midst of making those payments, Cohen sent a message to Gilder saying: \u201cWe gotta send [the baseball player] more to get rid of him,\u201d according to the indictment.<\/p>\n<p>Gilder previously pled guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, according to Law360.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From left: Jrue Holiday, Chandler Parsons, Courtney Lee. Image source: Wikimedia Creative Commons Darryl Cohen allegedly used clients\u2019&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,27427,81780,6,81781],"class_list":["post-620431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-fraud","tag-morgan-stanley","tag-nba","tag-viatical"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116121588493260857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}