GREENEVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A man from Tennessee is facing over 90 federal charges for allegedly submitting numerous fraudulent class action lawsuit claims using the identities of deceased or retired baseball players.
On August 12, George Herman Ruth, aged 69 from Morristown, was indicted on 91 criminal charges, which include mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of Social Security numbers, and money laundering. The indictment was made public on Thursday.
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Despite the alleged fraudulent use of names belonging to dead or retired baseball players, George Herman Ruth is listed as his legal name in court documents. It remains unclear if he legally changed his name to resemble George Herman “Babe” Ruth, the famous baseball figure.
The indictment claims that from January 2023 to July 10, 2025, Ruth orchestrated an intricate nationwide fraud scheme. He is alleged to have sent numerous fraudulent class forms to class action administrators throughout the U.S. The Department of Justice accuses Ruth of identifying pending class action lawsuits and exploiting the names of deceased or retired baseball players, utilizing the Social Security numbers of unsuspecting individuals.
Allegedly, Ruth’s scheme also included opening multiple post office boxes in Tennessee and setting up a fake company, El Mundo Marketing LLC, to create an account for laundering the money obtained from the claims. According to the Department of Justice, Ruth is accused of obtaining, or attempting to secure, more than $550,000 through these fraudulent activities.
In 2020, Ruth received a federal prison sentence of 56 months after admitting to conspiracy charges to defraud the Social Security Administration and Internal Revenue Service. Court records indicate he had been imprisoned from about 1984 to 2014 with brief releases. He was under supervised release when charged in Tennessee.
If convicted, he could face up to 20 years plus a mandatory, consecutive two-year sentence, a term of supervised release up to three years, and a fine up to $250,000.
