Scott Spina, of New Jersey, has pleaded guilty to impersonating a Patriots player to get “family and friends” Super Bowl rings.
He messaged an ex-Patriots player, referred to in court documents as “T.J.,” in 2017 asking to buy his Super Bowl ring. He gave T.J a hot check to acquire the ring and the player’s username and password to access a website that sells “family and friends” rings.
He sold T.J.’s ring for $63,000 to a well-known sports memorabilia broker. Spina then told the ring company that he knew Tom Brady‘s baby and wanted to get three rings engraved with Brady’s name on it as a gift.
He told the same broker that the rings had been gifts to Brady’s nephews. The buyer ended up backing out after growing suspicious about Brady having three nephews and that the geotags of the photos Spina sent him were located in New Jersey rather than Massachusetts.
Spina instead sold the rings to an auction house for $100,000. The auction house sold one of the rings for $337,000.
“By pretending to be a New England Patriots player, the defendant was able to get Super Bowl rings from the company that issued them,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Silber said. “But in offering the rings for sale, he was also selling their connection to Tom Brady — a story that simply did not hold up on close scrutiny.”
Spina has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud, mail fraud and aggravated identity theft, per the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Spina’s court date is set for January 31 in Los Angeles.
