Just a few years ago, Wendell Smallwood won the Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles. Now he has to answer to the court. He faces decades in prison.

Former NFL professional and Super Bowl winner Wendell Smallwood faces decades in prison for serious fraud and tax offenses.

As court documents from late October show, Smallwood is charged with three serious crimes. These are wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, the official tax authority of the United States. If convicted, the 30-year-old faces up to 50 years in prison.

Smallwood is accused of defrauding government agencies by submitting false information in order to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in payments to the companies he managed. The federal prosecutor also accuses him of being involved in a bribery conspiracy to defraud coronavirus relief programs and of lying to the tax authorities.

Specifically, he is alleged to have applied for COVID-19 relief using “defunct or recently registered entities” and to have provided false business activities. He is also charged with tax fraud conspiracy.

Smallwood was selected in the fifth round of the 2016 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles. He played for the Eagles for three years and won the Super Bowl with the team in February 2018. However, he did not play in the 41-33 victory over the New England Patriots.

After being released in Philadelphia in August 2019, he joined the Washington Redskins for one season. He then joined the practice squads of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Washington again.