Former running back Clinton Portis was sentenced Thursday to six months in federal prison and six months of home detention after he pleaded guilty in September to participating in a scheme to defraud a health-care plan for retired NFL players.
Portis, 40, admitted at the time he “knowingly and voluntarily” joined a conspiracy to commit health-care fraud. He was accused of pocketing roughly $100,000 from false claims submitted to the Gene Upshaw NFL Player Health Reimbursement Account Plan.
In all, 15 former NFL players pleaded guilty in the scheme, which prosecutors said illegally siphoned millions from the fund. Portis was one of three members of that group who took their cases to trial; the other two were former linebacker Robert McCune, described by prosecutors as a ringleader of the scheme, and former wide receiver Tamarick Vanover. After a trial for Portis and Vanover resulted in a hung jury, they decided to take a plea before a retrial was set to begin. Vanover is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 22.
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Portis is expected to report to prison in March.
Prosecutors at the federal courtroom in Kentucky where Portis’s trial took place asked that he receive a term on the higher end of the 10 to 16 months recommended by federal sentencing guidelines, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader, while attorneys for the former Washington and Denver star asked that he be credited with time served and not be given any prison time. In handing down her sentence, U.S. District Judge Karen K. Caldwell reportedly expressed an impression that Portis did not take enough accountability for his actions and thus merited some time behind bars.
“There is still this missing component, and that is owning what he did,” Caldwell said, according to the Herald-Leader.
The 12 players who pleaded guilty before a trial were Fred Bennett, C.C. Brown, Correll Buckhalter, James Butler, Reche Caldwell, John Eubanks, Joe Horn, Anthony Montgomery, Antwan Odom, Etric Pruitt, Darrell Reid and Carlos Rogers. Caldwell was shot and killed in June in Tampa.
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A second-round pick by Denver in 2002, Portis ran for more than 1,500 yards in each of his first two seasons before he was traded to Washington for future Hall of Fame cornerback Champ Bailey and a 2004 second-round pick. With Washington, Portis continued to excel for several more seasons, and the combination of his productive play and outgoing personality made him a fan favorite. At various points during his seven-year stint with Washington, he was teammates with five other eventual participants in the scheme — Caldwell, Eubanks, McCune, Montgomery and Rogers.
Portis told Sports Illustrated in 2017 that almost all of the retirement money he set aside from the $43.1 million he earned in his NFL career, which ended in 2010, was drained away by scam artists posing as money managers.
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