Former NBA journeyman point guard Sebastain Telfair, better known for his exploits as a high school phenom, is currently on trial in Brooklyn for a series of gun charges. Telfair was arrested in the summer of 2017 with a huge arsenal of weapons, and proceedings reportedly got off to a rocky start on Monday as Telfair, his estranged wife, his mistress, and a third woman could not testify about each other without disrupting the court.
The New York Post and New York Daily News have the play-by-play. Telfair’s estranged wife Samantha Loida-Telfair testified that before Telfair was arrested, he stole “all [her] clothes” as well as $250,000 in jewelry and gave it to his mistress, Caterina Scotto. Loida-Telfair realized that Telfair also took three of their cars, including the Ford F-150 his stash of guns would be found in, and kept them at Scotto’s apartment. She eventually tried to confront Scotto at a storage unit where the mistress was keeping Loida-Telfair’s stuff, and things got messy.
“When I came she just drove off and she almost hit me with her car,” she said. A chase ensued, with both women calling the cops on the other.
While Scotto was testifying about her on-and-off relationship with Telfair, she stopped to complain to Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Hecht that a woman in the crowd was intimidating her. “There’s this lady that keeps mouthing things to me,” Scotto said. “And it’s making me really uncomfortable.”
The woman, Patricia Ciccone, was pulled into a hallway and questioned. She said she was Telfair’s friend and was told to stop disrupting things. Telfair reportedly kept yawning at the defense table and turning around to communicate with Ciccone. “The defendant is turning to the audience and making facial expressions the jury can see,” Hecht said as he warned Telfair to stop. Ciccone reportedly spent Loida-Telfair’s testimony audibly chuckling for all the courtroom to hear.
After the trial was over, Scotto briefly addressed a Daily Mail camera crew to say “Sebastian’s new girlfriend ... she’s very ugly. Just know that she does sexual favors for free music videos.”
As for the possessions in question, Telfair eventually returned most of his wife’s items, though Scotto says she kept a few signed high school jerseys so that his kids might someday get them back. She didn’t sell them, because, well, who wants a Sebastian Telfair jersey in 2019?
“Did you ever sell any of that property for yourself?” his defense attorney Richard Southard asked Scotto.
“Why?” the 26-year-old said. “It’s not worth anything.”