A Florida injury attorney, now disbarred, has pleaded guilty to swindling litigation funders and former NFL football players who had sued the league over concussion injuries.
Just before his trial was set to begin in federal court in Tallahassee next week, Phillip Timothy Howard, of the injury and workers’ compensation claimants’ firm of Howard & Associates, pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges. He could now face up to 20 years in prison, more than $250,000 in fines, plus full restitution to the victims of his schemes, according to court documents filed Thursday.
“Howard, along with others, knowingly, willfully, and unlawfully conducted and participated in the conduct of the affairs of the Enterprise, through a pattern of racketeering activity, namely, wire fraud and money laundering,” the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida said in a statement.
Howard signed up a number of former players in a class-action lawsuit against the NFL, from 2015 to 2018, prosecutors said. He also helped establish several investment and advisory firms, including Cambridge Capital Group and Cambridge Capital Wealth Advisors. He then convinced the players to invest their settlement and retirement funds with the Capital firms and even offered advance loans.
But he never disclosed his association with the firms or the criminal backgrounds of people involved.
Howard also lured litigation funding for the class action and he made numerous misrepresentations to the funders, the prosecutors said. Altogether, Howard and his associates obtained or attempted to obtain as much as $10 million from third-party lenders.
As time went on, his organization also provided falsified financial statements.
Howard was indicted in December 2022. Nine months earlier, Howard was disbarred in a separate case involving an injured worker. The Florida Bar alleged that after the lawyer helped Jason Hall settle his workers’ compensation case for more than $612,000, he misled Hall into signing papers that placed the funds into the Howard law firm’s operating account. There, the money was misappropriated or comingled with Howard’s personal funds, the Bar charged.
The federal charges resulted from a joint investigation by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service, with assistance from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). The SEC filed a civil suit against Howard in 2019, alleging that he and Cambridge’s president defrauded impaired NFL players through bogus investment schemes. A federal court in 2021 permanently barred Cambridge firms from engaging in investment activity and to repay ill-gotten gains and interest.
Sentencing for Howard has been set for Nov. 6.
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