Luther Davis pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges in federal court Monday.
ATLANTA — Former University of Alabama football player Luther Davis pleaded guilty in federal court in Atlanta on Monday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Federal prosecutors said Davis, who’s from Roswell, and CJ Evins, who’s from Johns Creek, obtained loans by either pretending to be representation for an NFL player or impersonating the actual player. Prosecutors said they used that money to pay off other loans and buy things like jewelry and watches.
Evins also pleaded guilty, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia.
One of the players Davis is believed to have impersonated is Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Penix Jr., listed by his initials MP in court documents. Prosecutors said Davis wore wigs and make up to pass as players, including a durag when impersonating the player believed to be Penix.
They said Davis also made a fake drivers license of a player to present to a notary in order to secure a loan.
In court Monday, prosecutors said this began in 2023, becoming more elaborate by 2024, when some of the loans being secured were millions of dollars each. The scheme totaled close to $20 million.
To stream 11Alive on your phone, you need the 11Alive app.
Download the 11Alive app
“Using fake documents, bogus corporations, wigs, and makeup, Davis and Evins convinced lenders they were NFL players, obtained millions of dollars in fraudulent loans, and used the proceeds of their crimes to purchase real estate and luxury items,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. “This scheme highlights that anyone can be a target of identity theft, and my office will vigorously investigate and prosecute swindlers who steal identities to defraud others.”
Davis faces up to five years in prison on the wire fraud count and up to two years on the identity theft count. The sentencing hearing is in October 8th.
Davis’ attorneys had nothing more to say to reporters following the hearing.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
