NBA

NBA players union official gets jail for forgery

An elderly former NBA players union official was sentenced to a year and a half in prison Tuesday for forging a dead official’s signature on a fat, five-year, $3 million contract extension for himself.

Joseph Lombardo, 73, was sentenced to a year and a half in prison Tuesday after admitting he lied about the scheme to a federal grand jury.

Manhattan federal Judge Jesse Furman said it gives him “no pleasure” sentencing a senior to prison but said it was warranted based on Lombardo’s “perjury” and “fraud.”

“I have no choice given the conduct you displayed here,” said Furman, who also slapped him with a $10,000 fine and three years of supervised release after his prison sentence ends.

Lombardo, founder of Prim Capital in Cleveland, and a former boss of ex-NBA players union chief Billy Hunter, had all but begged for leniency in court during a five-minute speech. The disgraced money manager forged NBA Players Association General Counsel Gary Hall’s signature on a contract dated after Hall died.

He asked Furman for a non-prison sentence of home confinement, saying he’s in poor health and already lost so much, including his business and the “respect” of his family and friends.

He also boasted doing a “great job for the union” despite being overcome with greed. Lombardo claimed the union was $4 million “in the red” when Prim began managing its money in 2001 and that it was $250 million “in the black” at the time of his arrest last year.

“I was beginning to believe my own press clippings,” he said. “There is no excuse for what I did, I should have known better.”

The bogus contract would have doubled Lombardo’s annual pay to $602,000, the feds say. The generous but phony offer also included a provision that said it could not be canceled. The money manager allegedly tried to pen the contract after he became embroiled in a scandal that ousted Hunter, executive director of the players union.

“I became blinded by fear,” he told Furman.

Lombardo allegedly produced the document in January 2013 — over a year after Hall’s death in May 2011 — after learning about the impending release of a scathing report that blasted Hunter for financial irregularities, including hiring family members and friends.

Hunter — whose son, Todd, previously worked at Lombardo’s firm — was unanimously voted out of his job as the union’s executive director in February 2013 after being slammed by the independent audit. He had held the job for 17 years.

Although Lombardo’s company is based in Cleveland, he was indicted after a grand jury looked at the case in Manhattan, where the union is headquartered.

One of his employees, Carolyn Kaufman, was also charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to a grand jury. She was sentenced to six months house arrest after being found guilty by a jury last year.

Kaufman, the chief compliance officer and second-in-command of Prim, had alleged the fake contract was “cooked up” by Lombardo and another Prim employee.

Neither Billy Hunter nor Todd Hunter have been charged in the case.