Hawks fixing ‘deep’ damage caused by trusted exec, leader says

He was a trusted financial executive at the Atlanta Hawks for almost a decade, but Lester Jones Jr. turned out to be a liar, manipulator and thief whose betrayal caused deep emotional and cultural damage, the team’s executive vice president says.

Jones, the Hawks’ former senior vice president of finance, was sentenced Wednesday to just over three years in federal prison for embezzling around $3.8 million during the bulk of his 9-year tenure that ended June 30 when he was fired.

In a damning victim impact statement filed in federal court, Hawks Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer Scott Wilkinson said the damage Jones inflicted went far beyond monetary and is still being repaired. Wilkinson also spoke at Jones’ sentencing in Atlanta, asking for a longer prison term based on the “significant trauma” caused to the Hawks “family.”

“He would create fear and sow dissension,” Wilkinson said of Jones. “He has an extremely troubled relationship with the truth.”

An internal investigation after Jones’ firing revealed he lied his way into a job in the Hawks’ accounting and finance department in 2016 after being fired from Home Depot for submitting tens of thousands of dollars in false employee expense reimbursement requests, Wilkinson said.

Jones, 46, denies that he was fired from Home Depot in 2015, his lawyer, Brett Switzer, told the court.

Wilkinson said Jones, who since 2018 was the Hawks’ most senior accounting executive after the CFO, also manipulated subordinate employees, mostly minority women, into believing they needed his protection against nonexistent employment consequences tied to pregnancy and maternity leave.

“This manipulation caused wide-ranging internal cultural damage in the form of unfounded paranoia and distrust,” Wilkinson said. “The company is still working to remedy the deep emotional and cultural harm.”

Jones, whose personal purchases on the company dime included $137,500 in Beyoncé concert tickets and a time share in the Bahamas, said he’s embarrassed by his behavior and committed to making amends.

“It’s been very difficult to listen to everything that’s been presented today,” Jones told U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee. “Very difficult to hear that I instilled fear in my former colleagues. To them, I apologize.”

More than a dozen Hawks executives and other employees were in court for Jones’ sentencing. Wilkinson said other staffers were too afraid of Jones to attend.

Jones was supported in court by his younger sister, partner and adopted daughter.

The judge rejected as unreasonable Jones’ request for a sentence of around three years of home confinement with community service. He said executives who steal close to $4 million need to know they will face prison time.

“The list of what he spent money on is like something you would see in a Hollywood movie,” Boulee said. “I didn’t even believe it when I first read it.”

Jones, whose salary with the Hawks rose from $90,000 to almost $300,000, used more than $115,000 of the team’s money to buy a diamond engagement ring for his partner, Donni Frazier, who was also a Hawks employee, case records show. He put personal luxury travel, clothes, jewelry and entertainment on Hawks credit cards.

Frazier told the court that Jones is kind and compassionate.

“He is a man of integrity,” she said. “I just know the monster he’s made out to be is not him.”

Jones was charged in late October with a single count of wire fraud and granted a $10,000 bond after pleading not guilty. He pleaded guilty six weeks later as part of a deal with prosecutors, agreeing to pay full restitution plus interest and to abandon any property seized in connection with the case, including six “luxury timepieces” worth over $750,000.

Jones was ordered to pay $3.8 million in restitution to the Hawks and its insurer, with which it reached an associated settlement.

In a recent court filing, Jones said he doesn’t have enough money to pay the restitution in full, but is working with a financial consultant to gather what he can. He said he’s extremely remorseful.

“I deeply regret betraying the trust of those affected, and the pain of the hurt I have caused is something I carry with me daily and will for the rest of my life,” he wrote. “The disappointment of my friends and colleagues who entrusted me with a role I loved will forever be etched in my memory as a sad and embarrassing reminder of my actions.”

Jones faced up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $7.6 million. As part of his deal with prosecutors, they recommended he receive a “low end” prison sentence of just over three years.

Judges are not obligated to adopt prosecutors’ sentencing suggestions.

Jones said he wanted home confinement so he could look after his ailing mother. He said he grew up poor in Greenville, Mississippi, where he experienced constant beatings from his father as well as racial abuse. He said the Hawks job was a dream come true.

“I make no excuses whatsoever,” Jones told the judge. “I want to be better. I will be better and not defined by what I’ve done.”

Wilkinson said Jones’ involvement with the Hawks was a sham from the start. He said Jones falsely claimed in his job application that he was a licensed Certified Public Accountant with a Master of Business Administration from Tulane University who had voluntarily left his previous position at Home Depot.

The Hawks discovered after firing Jones that he had never been a CPA, he did not have an MBA from Tulane, and he was fired from Home Depot for what was “a precursor to the multimillion-dollar fraud that he later perpetrated against the Hawks,” Wilkinson said.

“Mr. Jones’ misconduct was an enormous betrayal to the company that had given him the biggest break of his career,” Wilkinson said. “This was a significant abuse of trust by Mr. Jones, for his personal benefit and to the substantial detriment of the Hawks.”

Jones’ embezzlement was discovered through an internal investigation of the Atlanta Hawks Foundation, of which Jones was treasurer, after its nonprofit status was revoked, Wilkinson said. He said Jones had failed to file the foundation’s tax returns for three years and was fired for lying about it, leading to a wider probe of his conduct.

Wilkinson said Jones tried to downplay the extent of his theft and initially blamed two of his cousins who had been living with him, forcing a lengthy and expensive forensic accounting process that determined an “extremely conservative” loss of around $3.8 million.

“Mr. Jones has always been quick with a teary, generic apology, but he has repeatedly declined the opportunity to provide documents or information to streamline the process and to reduce the time and resources needed to unravel the mess,” Wilkinson said.

Jones was hired by the Hawks in March 2016 as the senior manager of financial planning and analysis. In 2021, he became senior vice president of finance.