Reality star Brittish Williams has been ordered to serve her four-year prison sentence nearly nine hours away from family, RadarOnline.com can exclusively report, despite the court recommending she be housed nearby in St. Louis.
The Basketball Wives alum is heading to Alderson FPC prison in West Virginia, which currently houses 713 inmates, based on a filing entered into her criminal case today.
The location is for female offenders and is a far drive for her loved ones who reside in Missouri, who might want to pay Williams visits while she does the time for her crimes.
The former VH1 personality found out her prison fate in October after being charged with 15 fraud-related felonies, including five counts of misuse of a Social Security number, four counts of bank fraud, three counts of making false statements to the IRS, and three counts of wire fraud.
In her plea agreement, Williams confessed to under-reporting her income on tax returns for 2017-2019 and falsely claiming a niece and nephew as dependents.
Williams was also condemned after applying for the California COVID-19 Rent Relief program, fraudulently claiming that she was a state resident with a total annual household income of $50,000 and that she couldn’t pay her rent due to a “reduction in hours of work” caused by the pandemic — per her plea agreement — while her pay and work hours were not impacted.
After completing her prison stint, Williams will be on supervised release for five years, and she must also pay a whopping $564,069 in restitution.
“Brittish Williams was getting paid to portray her celebrity lifestyle on Basketball Wives when in fact she was a typical fraudster,” said Special Agent in Charge Jay Greenberg of the FBI St. Louis Division. “After today’s sentencing, her reality is now a life of a felon.”
Her legal team, however, argued the court threw the book at her only because of her famous name. “Brittish Williams was punished today, not for fraud, but for her celebrity,” Williams’ attorney, Beau Brindley, said in a statement.
RadarOnline.com exclusively reported on Williams’ lawyer filing an appeal in November, asking a higher court to review her sentence in an effort to have her time behind bars decreased.
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“The Court chose to treat her more harshly due to her status as a public figure rather than treating similarly situated defendants equally,” Brindley continued. “Ms. Williams’ success is not a crime subject to enhanced penalty. And we will challenge this sentence through every legal means available.”
