A judge has shut down former Basketball Wives star Brittish Williams’s motion to vacate her four-year prison sentence.
Brittish alleges the judge overseeing her case treated her unfairly.
The district court also improperly sentenced Ms. Williams based on her status as a reality tv celebrity, finding that she was more worthy of punishment because she failed to live up to the court’s ideal of a role model that it believed should be fulfilled by all public figures,” her attorney claimed. “This resulted in a sentencing process that Ms. Williams now contends was unreasonable and she asks that her sentence thus be vacated.”
The reality star was convicted of committing $564,000 worth of fraud, including tax fraud, bank fraud, insurance fraud, and three separate pandemic fraud schemes.
In May, she pleaded guilty to 15 felonies: five counts of misuse of a Social Security number, four counts of bank fraud, three counts of making false statements to the IRS, and three counts of wire fraud.
“Brittish Williams was getting paid to portray her celebrity lifestyle on “Basketball Wives” when in fact she was a typical fraudster,” said Special Agent in Charge Jay Greenberg of the FBI St. Louis Division. “After today’s sentencing, her reality is now a life of a felon.”
Even though she pleaded guilty, it seems Brittish feels that the punishment doesn;t fit the crime.
Brittish’s attorney added, “The district court chose to treat her differently than it would treat any other similarly-situated defendant, and explicitly so. The district court explained that it believed that Ms. Williams had obligations to the public that other citizens do not have and, solely by virtue of her fame, her failure to meet those obligations made her more deserving of punishment than an identical defendant with less fame.”