Professional athletes live much of their lives in public. Headlines highlight new contracts, milestones, home purchases, and relationship updates, while personal details quietly enter the public record — birthdates, hometowns, addresses, and family information. Images of athletes circulate across social media and sports sites. With so much information so accessible, alongside publicly known lucrative contracts, superstar athletes routinely face identity theft attempts. These athletes understand the risks and typically have teams and tools in place to monitor and safeguard their identities. Organizations also apply extra scrutiny when their names appear in financial or commercial transactions.

But what about the athletes who haven’t “made it” yet? Are fraudsters already exploiting the identities of up-and-coming prospects?

Data and Methodology

We assembled two datasets representing exposure vectors within the online fraud ecosystem:

• NBA Draft Lists (2020–2024): Every ESPN-published list, totaling 288 player names.
• NFL Draft Lists (2020–2024): Every Wikipedia-published list, totaling 1,292 player names.

We matched each identity against application records submitted to SentiLink partners since 2020. These records included legitimate applications and suspected identity theft attempts, as identified by SentiLink’s fraud-detection models. We relied on SentiLink’s proprietary ID Theft score, which ranges from 1 to 999; applications scoring 600 or above signify a high likelihood of identity theft.

Results

Does Making an NBA or NFL Draft List Increase the Risk of Identity Theft Attempts?

We identified 138 identities from the NBA list and 814 from the NFL list with application activity. We then measured the prevalence of high-risk applications. For the NBA list, the identity theft attempt rate was roughly 10% across all identities and more than 20% among identities with applications. For the NFL list, the rate was about 10% across all identities, increasing to nearly 15% among identities with applications.

Chart courtesy of Maimon of SentiLink

These elevated rates sharply contrast with typical identity theft rates among United States consumers, which fall in the 2 to 3% range for credit cards, auto loans, and consumer-lending applications. By comparison, identity theft rates for NBA and NFL draft prospects are roughly five times higher.

To evaluate trends over time, we charted quarterly rates of high-risk applications for both lists across four years and computed a Last Twelve Months (LTM) rolling average. The results show a clear upward trend. Even the smoothed rolling average stays well above the low single-digit baseline typically observed in consumer populations.

Which Types of Organizations Are Most Targeted?

We analyzed the distribution of high-risk applications across major financial and service sectors. For NBA draft identities, Consumer Lending and Demand Deposit Accounts (DDA) were the most frequently targeted, followed by Telecommunications and Auto loans. For NFL draft identities, Auto loans and DDA were most targeted, followed by Telecommunications.

Chart courtesy of Maimon of SentiLink

Why Is This Happening?

Several factors contribute to the disproportionately high targeting of NBA and NFL draft prospects:

1. High Public Exposure and Easy Accessibility

Draft lists are widely published on ESPN, Wikipedia, social media and sports databases. They provide structured lists of real individuals’ names, offering fraudsters an easy alternative to purchasing stolen data or scraping datasets. Draft prospects also have extensive biographical details online — birthdates, hometowns, schools — which help fraudsters complete applications or pass identity checks.

2. Young Adults Are Prime Targets

Prospects are typically 18 to 23 years old and often have short credit histories, fewer financial accounts, and inconsistent digital footprints. These traits make fraudulent applications less likely to trigger alerts tied to established behavior.

3. Low Likelihood of Early Detection

College athletes and draft prospects move frequently — campus to training facility to combine to draft events — and may not actively monitor credit reports or mail. This delay in detection gives fraudsters more time to operate.

4. Perceived High-Value Identity Association

Identities linked to major collegiate programs or professional pipelines may seem credible to automated underwriting systems. Even without high income, the association with reputable institutions can reduce scrutiny.

5. Use of AI Tools to Manipulate Public Athlete Images

Fraudsters increasingly use AI to manipulate high-quality athlete photos available online. These tools can fabricate IDs appearing to be held by the athlete or create animated “liveness” images to defeat authentication systems.

A Growing Fraud Pattern

Identity thieves are not waiting for athletes to become stars before exploiting their information. Draft prospects — young, visible and digitally exposed — are becoming prime targets long before they play professionally. Their public profiles supply fraudsters with birthdates, hometowns and high-resolution images that can be manipulated using AI.

The rising trend in high-risk applications across recent draft classes shows this is a growing fraud pattern, not a one-off phenomenon. As more athlete data moves online, barriers to impersonation continue to shrink. Financial institutions, platforms and verification providers will need to adjust accordingly — because fraudsters already have.