An affidavit submitted in marketing agent Gina Ford’s case against Zion Williamson alleges that Williamson accepted a $400,000 payment before he began playing at Duke University.
Williamson’s legal team immediately responded with claims of fraud and forgery.
Ford is seeking $100 million after Williamson left her company — Prime Marketing Sports — to sign with CAA.
According to Yahoo Sports, Ford has filed a number of affidavits in the case that seek to show that Williamson was never eligible to play at Duke, which would bolster her legal claim and may increase pressure on Williamson to settle the case out of court.
The most recent affidavit was provided by Donald Kreiss, who claims to have helped Slavko Duric’s Maximum Management Group. According to the affidavit, Duric requested help in securing Williamson’s commitment to play at Duke, and Kreiss claims that he helped in the process of paying Williamson the $400,000.
Williamson’s attorney Jeffrey S. Klein responded to Thursday’s claims, describing them in a statement to The Athletic’s Daniel Wallach as “frivolous,” while calling the documents cited in the claim as “fraudulent.”
“The alleged ‘agreements’ and driver’s license attached to these papers are fraudulent — and neither Mr. Williamson nor his family know these individuals nor had any dealings with them,” the statement reads. “We had previously alerted Ms. Ford’s lawyers to both this fact and that we had previously reported the documents to law enforcement as forgeries, but they chose to go ahead with another frivolous filing anyway.
“This is a desperate and irresponsible attempt to smear Mr. Williamson at the very time he has the opportunity to live his dream of playing professional basketball.”
