Basketball Wives LA star Brittish Williams has accepted a plea deal after she was arrested and charged with five counts of misuse of a Social Security number, four counts of bank fraud, three counts of making false statements to the IRS and three counts of wire fraud.
According to NBC 4, Williams pleaded guilty to the charges, admitting that she amassed $446,000 in stolen funds.
On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement that Williams confessed she did not accurately report her income on recent tax returns and wrongfully claimed a niece and nephew as dependents. She also dodged more than $29,000 in taxes from 2017 through 2019.
According to prosecutors, Williams used the Social Security numbers of others to open bank and credit card accounts. She would then deposit checks from the accounts of others (totaling more than $23,000), then withdrew them.
Furthermore, Williams engaged in pandemic and insurance fraud. At the height of the pandemic, she filed and submitted nine applications for disaster loans designed for businesses that were faltering during the pandemic. She also applied for four applications for the Paycheck Protection Program, and one application for a rent relief program in California. Court documents state she spent $144,000 in government loans to live a lavish lifestyle.
“British received $27,800 in rent relief after falsely claiming she was a California resident with a total household income of less than $50,000 and had reduced work hours,” according to a report in The Source. “Her work hours were not reduced because of the pandemic, the plea says. Also, her rent was reimbursed by the network that produces Basketball Wives, a TV show that she was featured on.”
By accepting the plea deal, her chances of imprisonment are less likely, although she still faces up to 30 years for the bank fraud charges, 20 years for the wire fraud charges, and up to five years each for the five charges of misusing a Social Security number.
