Before Zion Williamson played for the Duke Blue Devils for one season, his stepfather asked for and received $400,000.
According to an affidavit filed in federal court on Thursday, a marketing agent gave the stepfather the payment in October of 2018.
Because Lee Anderson, Zion Williamson’s stepfather, received the forbidden payment from Slavo Duric, a Canadian marketing agent, attorneys for Gina Ford stated that the affidavit and other evidence demonstrate the fact that Williamson was not eligible to play for the Blue Devils during the 2018-19 season.
Alvin Pittman, Ford’s attorney, wrote a letter to Williamson’s attorney on Monday.
In the letter, he stated that he had evidence that pointed to whether or not Zion Williamson was an amateur athlete during his time with the Blue Devils. He and his law firm believe that Williamson was not an amateur athlete a long time before he started communicating with Mr. Pittman’s client.
Jeffrey Klein, Williamson’s attorney, gave a statement to ESPN in which he said Mr. Williamson and his family are unfamiliar with the individuals in this matter. The agreements that Mr. Williamson supposedly had with these people and the driver’s license that was attached to the documents are counterfeits. Mr. Klein informed Ms. Ford’s attorneys that the documents were forgeries and that the Williams family denied knowing the individuals.
The law firm also reported the forgery to the police, but Ms. Ford’s attorneys chose to go forward with a pointless filing anyway. Ms. Ford and her attorneys are taking this opportunity to place Mr. Williamson in a bad light right before he has the chance to make his dream of playing professional basketball come true.
Donald Kreiss is an entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, and he participates in investing, fundraising and making deals.
One of the exhibits attached to the motion mentioned above is an affidavit from Mr. Kreiss in which he stated that he met Mr. Duric through a third party. Mr. Kreiss agreed to invest in Maximum Management Group, a company that Mr. Duric owns.
For the investment, Mr. Kreiss was to receive a percentage of the money that the company would receive from an exclusive marketing agreement that the company supposedly had with Mr. Williamson.
According to the affidavit, Mr. Williamson chose Creative Artists Agency to represent him in his marketing opportunities.
After that occurred, Mr. Kreiss and Mr. Anderson elected to repay the money that the company gave to Williamson’s family and pay themselves $7 million to $10 million as well.
Kreiss also stated that Mr. Duric was required to destroy any documents related to the money paid to Williamson’s family and the contract that MMG and Williamson signed.
Also included with the exhibits was a marketing agreement for Maximum Management Group. Mr. Williamson and Mr. Anderson are rumored to have signed this agreement on May 2, 2019.
They also supposedly signed a letter that stated that both parties would agree to pay Mr. Duric $500,000 for the purpose of repaying the money that was given to the Williamson family.
Mr. Klein wrote a letter to Mr. Pittman in which he wrote that he performed a search on Google where he learned that Mr. Duric forged the signatures of Luka Doncic and his mother on a contract. Doncic is a player for the Dallas Mavericks.
Mr. Klein further states in his letter that the signatures on the exhibits are demonstrably fraudulent. The signature for Mr. Williamson that appears on the agreement between him and Maximum Management Group and the signature on another agreement do not look the same to him.
There are also signatures on the letter of declaration, and they cannot be verified. When one compares these signatures to the entire document, the area where the signatures were written do not appear to be as pixelated as the rest.
Mr. Klein also stated that another victim of Mr. Duric contacted him and claimed that Mr. Duric defrauded him in the same way that he defrauded Mr. Williamson.
Mr. Klein informed law enforcement authorities of the latest allegations and also informed them of the declarations made by Mr. Kreiss. Mr. Kreiss did not state anything in his declaration that came from personal knowledge.
A majority of the document contains hearsay from Mr. Duric, so Mr. Klein doesn’t believe that Mr. Kreiss is completely aware of all the schemes that Mr. Duric is accused of perpetrating.
Mr. Williamson’s attorneys want a North Carolina federal judge to declare that the marketing agreement he signed with Ford and Prime Sports Marketing is void.
The reason is because Ford wasn’t registered as an agent in that state and that the contract didn’t have a warning that was required by law. The warning was designed to protect amateur athletes from agents with nefarious intentions, so the contract isn’t valid.
Because Mr. Williamson eventually signed a marketing agreement with CAA, Ms. Ford and Prime Sports Marketing sued Mr. Williamson for breach of contract in Florida.
An appeals court granted Mr. Williamson a stay over the lawsuit that Ms. Ford and Prime Sports Marketing initiated.
This means that Williamson, who plays for the New Orleans’ Pelicans, isn’t required to answer discovery requests about whether or not his parents received money they were not entitled to receive while he was playing at Duke. This may last until the federal court resolves the case surrounding this issue.
