Washington, D.C. – A federal court report filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia has exposed an organized scheme in which predatory personal injury law firms exploited retired NFL players to fraudulently harvest millions in settlement payouts — pocketing $20M in fees while undermining a fund built to serve players who genuinely suffered.

The Associated Press has the full report, which can be read here.

“This is what a predatory personal injury mill looks like in practice — cold-call vulnerable people, manufacture diagnoses, and collect fees on fraudulent claims,” said Lauren Zelt, Executive Director of PACT. “Five law firms. Ninety-eight former players used as pawns. Twenty million dollars in fees. When lawyers exploit the people they’re supposed to protect, real victims pay the price — and a fund designed to last 65 years gets looted by personal injury lawyers.” 

Among the Highlights:

• An organized laundering scheme. The report called it “an organized scheme … in which these law firms — and potentially others — circumvented the Settlement’s anti-fraud safeguards and laundered questionable Parkinson’s Disease diagnoses into payable claims.”
• A hotel lobby assembly line. “Retired players waited in a hotel lobby in Dallas to meet with a traveling doctor who had rented a suite for the purpose of examining them for Parkinson’s” — unapproved, unqualified, and in at least one case ineligible due to bankruptcy and tax liens.
• Approved doctors were trapped. By the time players reached legitimate, court-approved physicians, they were already on symptom-suppressing medication. Doctors “had little choice but to defer to manufactured outside records” — turning the settlement’s own safeguards into a rubber stamp for fraud.
• Cold-calling vulnerable retired players. Informants told auditors that one attorney “cold-called Retired NFL Players, promising a Diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease” if they switched firms — pure client harvesting targeting the most vulnerable.
• $95 million approved before anyone noticed. 57 fraudulent claims totaling more than $95 million were paid out before tips prompted an audit. The attorneys’ cut: approximately $20 million.
• The fund was built to last 65 years. Every dollar stolen by a predatory firm is a dollar no longer available to the players who actually need it — for decades to come.

This isn’t the first instance where retired NFL players have missed out on settlement funds because of unscrupulous individuals in the personal injury sector. In 2019, a judge “terminated three of the four lawyers serving as class counsel after they objected to restrictions on geographical restrictions on the doctors who can evaluate retired players for dementia and other brain injuries.” Back in 2017, a litigation financing company was penalized $70,000 by federal authorities for misleading NFL concussion victims with deceptive loans. 

It’s time for accountability. Lawmakers should push forward to strengthen oversight of personal injury firms and litigation financing companies before more players, and more settlement dollars, are lost to a fraudulent system.