A New Jersey man faces up to 92 years in prison after being charged with fraudulently buying and selling Super Bowl rings engraved with Tom Brady's name

• Federal prosecutors said Scott Spina posed as a Patriots ex-player to buy and sell Super Bowl rings.
• The rings were engraved with the surname of former Pats quarterback Tom Brady, prosecutors said.

A New Jersey man who posed as an ex-New England Patriots player in order to buy and sell Super Bowl rings engraved with Tom Brady's last name has been charged with fraud, federal prosecutors said Monday.

Scott Spina, 24, began buying Super Bowl rings in 2017 when he purchased a Super Bowl LI ring from a Patriots player using at least one bad check, the US attorney's office for the Central District of California said Monday.

Spina then sold that ring for $63,000 to a broker, the attorney's office added.

When he obtained the player ring, Spina also gathered information that allowed him to pose as the unnamed player, who has since left the team, and purchase Super Bowl rings, pretending they were for family and friends.

According to the criminal information filed Monday: "Spina then called the Ring Company, fraudulently identified himself as [the former player], and started ordering three family and friend Super Bowl LI rings with the name 'Brady' engraved on each one, which he falsely represented were gifts for the baby of quarterback Tom Brady.

"The rings were at no time authorized by Tom Brady. Defendant Spina intended to obtain the three rings by fraud and to sell them at a substantial profit."

Spina then entered into an agreement with a man to sell him the three rings that he claimed Brady had given to his nephews, according to the attorney's office.

But after the buyer became suspicious and backed out, Spina sold them to an auction house for $100,000, prosecutors said. One of the rings later sold at auction for $337,219.

In a plea agreement filed on Monday, Spina agreed to plead guilty to the five felony offenses with which he has been charged — one count of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft.

As part of the agreement, the 24-year-old also said he'd pay restitution to the former Patriots player who sold him his Super Bowl ring.

Spina has agreed to appear in court in Los Angeles on January 31, where he is expected to enter his guilty pleas.

He will face a statutory maximum penalty of 92 years in federal prison, though the actual sentence will likely be "substantially less," according to the US attorney's release.

Brady, who has won a record seven Super Bowl rings, had a day to forget on Sunday as he failed to throw a single touchdown in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' 9-0 loss to the New Orleans Saints.

During the defeat, the quarterback was captured by TV cameras angrily throwing away a tablet on which he was watching film.

"Just a tough night. Didn't do much of anything right," Brady said after the game, according to NFL.com. "So we gotta get a lot better. Gotta get back to work."