Naman Shrestha
In the episode titled ‘The Sideline Scammer’ of Hulu’s ‘Scam Goddess,’ Laci Mosley investigates the case of Peggy Ann Fulford, a scammer and con artist who preyed on wealthy and professional athletes by pretending to be a qualified and competent financial advisor. After promising generational wealth and gaining her client’s trust, she misused her position as their business manager and used the money to fund her extravagant lifestyle. The documentary also features exclusive interviews with some of her victims, including Ricky Williams.
Peggy Ann Fulford Allegedly Scammed Multiple Professional Athletes For Millions of Dollars
On October 10, 1958, in New Orleans, Louisiana, Donald and Juanita gave birth to Peggy Ann Barard, who graduated from a local high school before graduating from Atlanta’s Spelman College. Over the years, she got married five times, with one of her husbands being a victim of a 1985 plane crash. When she began her scamming schemes, Peggy Ann Fulford took up multiple aliases, including Peggy King, Peggy Williams, Peggy Rivers, Peggy Simpson, Peggy Barard, Devon Cole, and Devon Barard. In order to pose as a competent financial advisor and business manager, she claimed that she had earned degrees from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School and had also made millions on Wall Street.
Given her fake qualifications and the promise to work for free to help her clients make generational wealth, many top-notch professional athletes — NBA player Dennis Rodman, NFL Running Back Ricky Williams, NBA player Travis Best, NFL player Lex Hilliard, and NBA player Rashad McCants — hired her to handle their finances. Instead of managing her clients’ expenses honestly and professionally, she allegedly transferred millions of victim funds to her multiple bank accounts and fulfilled her own extravagant needs. However, she claimed that she had kept her clients informed about her personal expenses, which included real estate, luxury cars, airline tickets, and jewelry. According to reports, Peggy moved the scammed money back and forth between her 85 bank accounts so as to avoid any suspicions.
While working as the business manager for Dennis Rodman, she also got involved in his personal life, so much so that he even thanked her in his 2011 Hall of Fame induction speech. When the authorities questioned the athlete about his failure to provide child support payments to his first wife for four months, the truth about Peggy started to come to the surface. Upon digging deeper, the authorities learned that she used the Dennis Rodman Group LLC, Dennis Rodman Group & Associates LLC, and Dennis Rodman Inc. to launder money. Finally, in December 2016, she was accused of defrauding several professional athletes out of millions of dollars and taken into custody. She was charged with eight counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and interstate transportation of stolen property.
Peggy Ann Fulford is Serving Her Supervised Parole at a Halfway House
On February 1, 2018, Peggy Ann Fulford pleaded guilty but only to one count of interstate transportation of stolen property. During her sentence hearing, Kristin Williams and Rebekah Hilliard, the former wives of Ricky Williams and Lex Hilliard, respectively, took the stand and opened up about their financial losses caused by the scammer. Moreover, a New Orleans-based man also testified against her, claiming that she defrauded him out of $25,000. In the end, on November 7, 2018, the judge overruled the defensive arguments and sentenced Peggy to 10 years in prison in addition to three years of supervised release.
She was also ordered to pay nearly $6 million in restitution to her victims. A few months later, Dennis Rodman filed a separate lawsuit against Peggy in Broward County, Florida. The following year, in 2020, she asked the court for a compassionate release after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. She claimed that she finished her educational classes and had done full-time laundry work behind bars, helping her achieve rehabilitation. In 2021, she also argued that her guilty plea should have also led to her receiving a lighter sentence and that her legal representation was not competent enough.
In a prison interview for a documentary, she talked about how her father allegedly physically abused her in her early days. After serving half of her 10-year sentence, the scammer was allowed an early release from prison on April 27, 2023. As for her three supervised years, she was transferred to a halfway home program in Orlando, Florida, where she currently resides. Currently, she is waiting for her release date, which is scheduled for April 24, 2026.
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