A former University of Alabama football player donned makeup and wigs during an elaborate multimillion-dollar fraud scheme in which he secured loans pretending to be NFL players, federal authorities said.<\/p>\n
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Luther Davis has indicated he will plead guilty at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Steven D. Grimberg in Atlanta on April 27, according to a court calendar.<\/p>\n
He and his co-defendant, CJ Evins, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. <\/p>\n
From around May 2023 to October 2024, Davis and Evins “executed a scheme to fraudulently obtain millions of dollars in loans from multiple lenders” by “impersonating professional football players and falsely claiming those players were seeking multi-million dollar loans,” according to federal court documents filed against them last month. <\/p>\n
Federal prosecutors identified victims by the initials X.M., D.N. and M.P. and said they were \u201cactive professional football players in the National Football League,\u201d according to the filings.<\/p>\n
After Davis and Evins told victims they represented the NFL players, lenders eventually needed to meet with the prospective borrowers via video conference, authorities alleged.<\/p>\n
Davis wore makeup, a wig or another head covering in the video meetings to show he was the player who needed the loan, the filings say. <\/p>\n
“Unbeknownst to the broker and the lender, none of the players who were supposedly receiving the loans attended any of these closings,” according to the filings.<\/p>\n
Instead, Davis “dressed in disguise and impersonated the players, providing fake identification documents to convince the notary,” the documents said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe net loan proceeds were wired to a bank account\u201d that the defendants controlled, according to the filings.<\/p>\n
The two obtained more than $19.8 million from 13 fraudulent loans and used the proceeds to buy real estate, vehicles and jewelry, the filings say.<\/p>\n
An attorney for Davis did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n
Evins also intends to plead guilty before Grimberg this month, court records show. His attorney, Benjamin Black Alper, confirmed the scheduled plea and had no further comment. <\/p>\n
Davis was a defensive lineman for the undefeated, championship 2009 Crimson Tide squad and made 47 tackles during a four-season career from 2007 to 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former University of Alabama football player donned makeup and wigs during an elaborate multimillion-dollar fraud scheme in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-868244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116419211013688322","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}