Jason Burgos
A wild report reveals NFL and NBA players were bilked out of thousands of dollars by a man posing as an adult film star, while he was in jail for a similar crime.
Late on Thursday night, The Athletic reported a story that no one would have guessed. Apparently, the NFL Players Association reached out to agents representing hundreds of players to alert them that their clients may have been the victims of a clever scheme by Kwamaine Jerell Ford.
This month, the 34-year-old native of Buford, GA, was charged with nine counts of wire fraud, seven counts of computer fraud, one count of access device fraud, four counts of aggravated identity theft, and one charge of sex trafficking by the US Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Georgia, according to The Athletic.
The US attorney’s office claims that while Ford was serving time for previously stealing credit card numbers from athletes and celebrities, he allegedly tried the scheme again in November 2020. In this instance, he posed as a popular adult film star to gain the interest of NFL — and NBA — players. He then also posed as a customer service representative for Apple and was able to get access to the “usernames, passwords, or multi-factor authentication codes” of athletes so they could get videos sent from the fake persona.
After getting that information, Ford was then able to obtain the athletes’ credit and debit card data and spend thousands of dollars on personal items. However, in 2021, the scheme that began in prison took a wild turn.
Prosecutors claim that the convict again posed as an adult film star to recruit, trick, and coerce a woman into engaging in commercial sex acts with the various athletes. Ford lied by saying the deeds would advance her modeling career. He then advertised the woman to athletes, negotiated payments in exchange for sex with the woman, and then took a cut.
Ford threatened the woman into being a part of the scheme and had her secretly film the encounters without consent to potentially use in blackmail schemes.
Ford was released from prison in January 2022 after being convicted of a similar scheme in March 2019. In that plot, he hacked into more than 100 Apple accounts belonging to athletes and rappers. He was found guilty of computer fraud and aggravated identity theft and spent nearly $325,000 of stolen funds.
