Freelance sports gambling columnist Sarah Phillips made headlines yesterday when she was fired from ESPN after Deadspin.com released an article claiming the 22-year-old was involved in fraud and extortion.
Since being accused of scamming a 19-year-old referred to as "Ben" out of his successful NBA memes Facebook page, and extorting $2,100 from a 30-something-year-old referred to as "Matt," new fraud allegations have been made.
An anonymous email was sent to IBTimes and other news sites claiming that Phillips and her supposed cohort Nilesh Prasad have been involved in scams in the past, more specifically at a T-Mobile premium retail location in Corvallis, Ore.
IBTimes spoke with a T-Mobile media relations representative who informed us that they were "not aware" of the current allegations against Sarah Phillips, but are "looking into the situation."
Phillips, along with Prasad, reportedly worked together at the Corvallis, Oregon T-Mobile location between 2009 and 2010. The anonymous email claims that Nilesh was a store manager and Phillips was an assistant store manager. T-Mobile is investigating if the emails claims are true about employment.
The email states that the pair allegedly "devised a way to get exchange students approved for postpaid accounts with T-Mobile even though they had no social security numbers. They would then use these new credit accounts with T-Mobile to activate the student's phone lines. However, they wouldn't just activate the requested lines, but also extra lines. They would then go onto eBay and sell extra lines with discounted phones at discounted prices if people submitted their personal information. They would activate the new customers using the student credit lines and ship the phones."
Anonymous sources that contacted IBTimes and Deadspin, report that both Phillips and Prasad were fired from T-Mobile in 2010. The source told Deadspin that Phillips and Prasad met when Phillips was in eighth grade and Prasad was a senior in high school.
IBTimes received an anonymous email from a Eugene local who claims to be a parent who used to be involved with high school and club soccer teams. Knowing Sarah Phillips from sports, the Eugene local says that she lost contact with Phillips around 2007. "She was always very sweet and hard working," the anonymous Eugene parent revealed about the Phillips from her athletic days in high school. "She seemed extremely responsible; was expected by her parent to earn her own way when she wanted to play club sports which can be very expensive." The parent went on to say that Phillips "accepted that and worked to attain the things that other players just automatically expected their parents to cover."
Overall the recent spotlight on Sarah Phillips comes as a "quite surprising" to the parent.
Another anonymous IBTimes email, though, states that "[Phillips and Prasad] are extremely shady."
To learn more about who Sarah Phillips is click here.
To find out more about Sarah Phillips and Nilesh Prasad's alleged involvement in T-Mobile fraud click here.
Have information about Sarah Phillips? Please email a.remling@ibtimes.com.
