A New Jersey man who posed as a former New England Patriots participant so he could try to market an Orange County broker Super Bowl rings he falsely claimed had been gifts to Tom Brady’s family members was sentenced on Monday, Aug. 29, to 3 a long time in prison.
Scott Spina Jr., now 25, was also purchased to pay out $63,000 in restitution to the unnamed former Patriots player he posed as in get to get “family versions” of the 2017 Super Bowl championship rings, 1 of which bought at auction for extra than $337,000, according to the U.S. Attorneys Workplace.
According to a sentencing memo submitted by his defense lawyer, Spina experienced been purchasing and providing sneakers and sporting activities memorabilia because he was 15, typically placing him in get in touch with with large faculty and college or university athletes, some who turned expert gamers.
In 2017, Spina, then 19, acquired a Patriots’ Super Bowl championship ring from a previous participant who experienced still left the group. The rings for that year’s group were being adorned with 5 Lombardi trophies symbolizing the quantity of championships the group experienced won at the time and was engraved with “Greatest Comeback Ever,” a reference to the staff overcoming a 28-3 deficit in the Super Bowl.
Spina paid the participant with at the very least just one bad examine, in accordance to prosecutors. Spina bought that ring for $63,000 to a nicely-known customer and vendor of championship rings who lives in Orange County, in accordance to his plea deal.
Alongside with the ring by itself, the previous Patriots participant later on told federal investigators that he gave Spina all the paperwork the player had received in connection to the ring, which took place to include things like info that authorized gamers to buy from the producer more compact Super Bowl rings for their spouse and children users and buddies.
Posing as the previous Patriots participant, Spina requested 3 “family-and-friends” championship rings from the producer, every single engraved with the name “Brady.” He reportedly claimed to staff members at the maker that the rings have been intended to be presents for “the newborn of quarterback Tom Brady,” prosecutors mentioned.
The very same Orange County customer agreed to also purchase the 3 “family-and-friends” championship rings that Spina had ordered. Spina experienced falsely instructed the buyer that Brady purchased those a few rings for three nephews, and that the nephews had agreed to promote them to Spina.
The Orange County buyer quickly had second thoughts soon after his research indicated that Brady didn’t really have any nephews, in accordance to prosecutors.
When the Orange County buyer backed out of the deal, Spina offered the “friends-and-family” rings to an auction property for $100,000, more than 3 moments what he compensated to buy them from the producer.
According to the memo penned by Spina’s lawyer, in just days of the auction property putting the three rings up for sale, Brady’s associates contacted the company and notified them that the rings experienced no relationship to Brady.
The auction house agreed to make apparent in is advertising and marketing that the rings had no connection to Brady, the protection attorney wrote. One of the rings however sold at auction for $337,219. According to the protection lawyer, the auction corporation “retained possession” of the other two “family” rings.
In July 2018, Spina was sentenced to 35 months in federal prison for an apparently unrelated wire fraud case in New Jersey, according to court filings. He was released to a midway residence in November 2020, and later began supervised launch.
In February, Spina pleaded guilty in a Santa Ana federal court to felony counts of mail and wire fraud, as perfectly as aggravated id theft relevant to the Tremendous Bowl rings fraud.
Spina’s protection lawyer, Thomas Ambrosio, wrote in his sentencing quick that the scenario was “an case in point of how the prosperous and renowned in this country are dealt with in different ways from the regular human being. …
“If this situation did not have a relationship to Tom Brady, the former quarterback for the New England Patriots, it is almost particular there would not have been an investigation by legislation enforcement,” Ambrosio wrote.
In his own letter to the federal decide, Spina wrote that his daily life has “changed drastically” since he was sent to jail for the New Jersey scenario. Spina told the choose that he is “no for a longer period that younger, reckless and selfish person. … Incarceration has modified my life with regards to my standpoint in valuing the smallest items in this entire world and understanding how every motion has a consequence.”
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