Pelicans' Zion Williamson, Family Members Sued for Allegedly Failing to Pay Back Loan | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson is being sued for allegedly failing to pay back a loan he received from tech company Ankr PBC.

Per the civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans (h/t the Associated Press), the company stated Williamson and his family received a loan of $2 million in September 2021 when it was trying to get the Pelicans star to serve as a spokesperson.

The California-based company alleges Williamson, his mother and stepfather failed to pay back $1.8 million of the loan.

The lawsuit states Lee Anderson, Williamson's stepfather, represented himself as Williamson's business manager and required a $150,000 upfront payment to negotiate a business relationship with the 23-year-old.

Williamson's mother, Sharonda Sampson, is named as a defendant in the lawsuit because Ankr PBC states it wired money to her bank account when Anderson allegedly told the company the family "urgently needed" a loan to cover "expensive investments including the purchase of certain real estate in New Orleans" they could not meet because of the "temporary suspension of payments from Williamson's sponsorship deals resulting from an injury."

Anderson is alleged to have told the company the family "would suffer financial hardship, and Williamson would not enter into a business relationship with Ankr" if they didn't receive an immediate loan.

Ankr states it agreed to make the loan with the condition it be repaid by Aug. 21, 2022, but Anderson "requested a series of extensions, and that when Ankr finally received a check for $25,000, it bounced."

Per the lawsuit, the company agreed not to sue Anderson if he made a payment of $500,000 by April 25 and the remainder by July 6 as part of a forbearance agreement between the two parties.

"Ankr received $500,000 on time," the AP report states, "but about $300,000 of that covered interest, and the remaining $1.8 million has not been repaid, the lawsuit said."

Per Ankr's official website, the company uses "blockchain systems that enable us to disrupt the intermediaries and gatekeepers that have dominated the web (and the world) so far" and "democratize services across the board from finance to data storage."

Williamson has spent the first four seasons of his NBA career with the Pelicans. Injuries have limited him to 114 games during that span, including 29 during the 2022-23 campaign. He's been named to the All-Star team in two of the past three seasons.