Five law firms accused of defrauding the NFL concussion fund of $87 million with faked Parkinson's diagnoses
Court-appointed special masters say firms representing 98 players worked with doctors to mask symptoms with medication before evaluations. The 51-page filing calls for denied claims and a redesigned diagnosis process.
Court-appointed special masters have accused five law firms representing 98 former players of scheming to defraud the NFL's concussion settlement fund of more than $87 million, using fraudulent Parkinson's disease diagnoses. The 51-page filing, made public Monday, describes a coordinated scheme involving eight doctors and a specific method for fooling the fund's evaluators.
What's the alleged scheme?
Gaming the diagnosis process with medication. According to special masters David A. Hoffman and Jo-Ann M. Verrier, the firms worked with select physicians to furnish improper Parkinson's diagnoses, then had players take powerful symptom-masking drugs, including Levodopa, before their evaluations by fund-approved doctors. The fund's physicians, seeing patients who appeared healthy because of the medication, tended to defer to the outside paperwork rather than observed symptoms. The result, the filing alleges, was a pipeline of fraudulent claims.
How big is it?
Substantial. The filing puts the alleged fraud at over $87 million across 98 players, with eight doctors implicated. The five firms named are Douglas Grossinger, Feder Law LLC, Pro Athlete Law Firm PA, Syme Law PLLC, and Reppert Oates & Vytell LLC. Parkinson's is one of the qualifying diagnoses under the concussion settlement, and the dollar values attached to it make it a target for exactly this kind of alleged manipulation.
What happens to the claims and the players?
The special masters called for the pending claims from affected players to be denied and for the Parkinson's diagnosis process to be redesigned to close the loophole. That's a significant step: it doesn't just target the firms and doctors but stops the specific claims in their tracks. The redesign is meant to prevent medication-masking from working again, which suggests the fund views the vulnerability as systemic rather than a one-off.
What's the NFL's position, and what's next?
The league backed the finding, calling the decision 'necessary given the scope of misconduct.' Beyond the denied claims and process redesign, referral to federal authorities remains possible, which would escalate this from a settlement-administration dispute to a criminal matter. The story sits at the intersection of two sensitive issues: protecting players genuinely harmed by football, and policing a fund whose payouts create incentives for fraud. The redesign will have to thread that needle without making legitimate claims harder to win.
Sources
- ESPN: Five law firms accused of defrauding NFL's concussion fund
