Bloomberg News reports:
Tate George, a former player for the National Basketball Association’s New Jersey Nets and Milwaukee Bucks, was charged with running a $2 million Ponzi scheme that targeted ex-professional athletes.
George, 43, raised more than $2 million for his company, The George Group, after telling investors his real-estate development portfolio was worth $500 million, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation complaint accusing him of wire fraud.
“In reality, The George Group had virtually no income generating operations,” U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in Newark, New Jersey, said in a statement today.
George used the money he raised to pay early investors in his company and to fund living expenses such as mortgage and child-support payments, restaurant meals, clothing and gas, according to the FBI complaint. George faces as long as 20 years in prison for the scheme, which prosecutors said began in 2005.
He surrendered to the FBI today and appeared in federal court in Newark, wearing a light-green suit and handcuffs.
