{"id":518625,"date":"2026-03-04T18:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/518625\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T18:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:24:08","slug":"advisor-who-defrauded-nba-players-in-insurance-scheme-convicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/518625\/","title":{"rendered":"Advisor Who Defrauded NBA Players in Insurance Scheme Convicted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPortland Trail Blazers<\/a> guard Jrue Holiday was defrauded by former Morgan Stanley investment<\/a> advisor Darryl Cohen, a Manhattan jury concluded in convicting Cohen of wire fraud and investment advisor fraud on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tProsecutors from the Southern District of New York charged Cohen and others in 2023 for orchestrating a scheme to defraud Holiday, along with former Houston Rockets forward Chandler Parsons and former New York Knicks guard Courtney Lee, of over $5 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tCohen was accused of exploiting his advisory and fiduciary relationships with these players.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one part of the scheme, Cohen duped the players into buying life insurance policies at \u201cmassive markups.\u201d More specifically, Cohen and other conspirators arranged for the sale of life insurance policies that were worth a combined $1.7 million for a whopping $6.2 million. Cohen\u2019s group kept the difference between the actual price and marked-up price, prosecutors asserted.<\/p>\n

\n\tCohen was also depicted as fraudulently diverting about $500,000 from the players\u2019 financial accounts into a basketball-related nonprofit organization under the guise they were donations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a text, Cohen assured one of the players his donation \u201chelped a lot of future prospects and a lot of underprivileged kids,\u201d when, in reality, the donation was used to build \u201cathletic training facilities in Cohen\u2019s backyard.\u201d In addition, Cohen allegedly used the players\u2019 money to pay off other clients who were threatening to sue him over allegations he lost their money.<\/p>\n

\n\tCohen\u2019s defense included that in some instances the players approved the transactions and thus were not defrauded. The defense also contended that venue was improper in the Southern District of New York. Cohen\u2019s attorneys maintained that none of the facts in the case, including dollars sent and received via bank accounts, took place in SDNY and \u201cnot a single defense witness to the charges resides in the District.\u201d Those and other arguments didn\u2019t persuade U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tCohen was not convicted of a third charge, conspiracy, because jurors could not reach a verdict on that count. Cohen faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. He can appeal his conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tCohen was charged with Calvin Darden Jr., who last year Broderick sentenced to<\/a> 12 years and seven months in prison for defrauding former NBA<\/a> All-Star Dwight Howard and Parsons out of about $8 million. Darden deceived Howard into believing he was buying the WNBA\u2019s Atlanta Dream when his $7 million was instead being rerouted to enable Darden to buy expensive cars and real estate. Darden is pursuing an appeal at the Second Circuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers guard Jrue Holiday was defrauded by former Morgan Stanley investment advisor Darryl Cohen, a Manhattan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5474,590,4621,85,258956],"class_list":["post-518625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-investment","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-sports","tag-sports-agents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}