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A Georgia man has been convicted on five counts of scamming former NBA players Dwight Howard and Chandler Parsons out of a combined $8 million.
Howard and Parsons, who were teammates on the Houston Rockets during the 2013-14 NBA season, were somehow duped into giving a man named Calvin Darden Jr. millions of dollars.
The scam on Chandler Parsons was centered around helping with the development of current Indiana Pacers player James Wiseman. Darden’s fraud on Dwight Howard was for a supposed investment to purchase the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.
Darden had help in his financial schemes from former NBA agent Charles Briscoe. Briscoe received three months of home detention and three years of supervision for one count of wire fraud after pleading guilty last November.
A jury found Calvin Darden Jr. guilty on all five charges against him, including fraud, bank fraud, money laundering and two different counts of conspiracy.
ESPN reports that prosecutors will be seeking a prison sentence of 11 to 14 years for Darden.
Darden reportedly used $6.1 million of the $7 million that Dwight Howard paid him to purchase $500,000 worth of cars including a Lamborghini, $110,000 on a piano, $90,000 on watches, the down payment on the purchase of a $3.7 million home in Atlanta, another $500,000 on home upgrades, and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of art.
Prosecutors said they planned to seize all of Darden’s assets and had hoped to have him immediately taken into custody. The judge in the case, however, ruled that Darden could remain free on bail until his sentencing on Jan. 27, 2025.
He has been convicted of fraud multiple times previously, including a case involving a fraudulent attempt to buy Maxim magazine which earned him one year in prison in 2016 after cooperating with prosecutors.
Darden’s father, Calvin Darden, Sr., was Senior Vice President of Operations at United Parcel Service (UPS), and has served on the Boards of Target Corp., Aramark, and Cardinal Health.