How A Super Bowl Ring With No Connection To Tom Brady Sold For $330K

SANTA ANA, CA — A New Jersey man will serve three years in federal prison after he executed a scheme that allowed him to buy friends and family Patriots Super Bowl rings, which he then sold as rings that belonged to relatives of Tom Brady, the U.S. Attorney's Office in California said.

One ring eventually sold at a 2018 auction for over $300,000, officials said.

Scott V. Spina Jr., 25, of Roseland, New Jersey, pled guilty to mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. In addition to jail time, the court ordered him to pay $63,000 to a former Patriots player.

That former player is where the scheme starts, according to court documents.

Spina purchased a Super Bowl LI ring from an unnamed Patriots player in 2017. Authorities say Spina paid for the ring with "at least one bad check", but eventually sold it to a broker for $63,000.

In addition to the ring, Spina also received information about Super Bowl rings that players can purchase for friends and family. They are, essentially, replicas of the team's rings, but slightly smaller.

“Spina then called the Ring Company, fraudulently identified himself as [the former player], and started ordering three family and friend Super Bowl LI rings with the name ‘Brady’ engraved on each one, which he falsely represented were gifts for the baby of quarterback Tom Brady,” according to court documents. “The rings were at no time authorized by Tom Brady. Defendant Spina intended to obtain the three rings by fraud and to sell them at a substantial profit.”

Spina originally agreed to sell the three rings to a man from Orange County, California, for $81,500, this time under the guise that Brady gave the rings to his nephews. However, court documents state, "the buyer started to believe that Brady did not have nephews, and he tried to withdraw from the deal."

Though his buyer backed out, Spina found another deal for the rings that same day, selling them to an auction house for $100,000 in November 2017. One of the family rings sold at auction in February 2018 for $337,219.

Spina eventually admitted to all of this in his plea agreement, noting that he defrauded the Orange County ring broker when he falsely claimed that the rings “were ordered for Tom Brady directly from [the Ring Company] for select family members.”

Spina also admitted that he defrauded this victim in relation to three wire transfers for the deposit on the family rings. Spina further admitted he committed identity theft when he posed as the former Patriot to purchase the rings, the U.S. Attorney's Office in California said.