D’Marco Farr was a Los Angeles Rams rookie when he first encountered a financial guru named Donald D. Lukens in 1994.

Searching for some financial guidance, Farr was directed to Lukens by a veteran teammate. Lukens, the teammate insisted, would make investments grow.

What Farr found was a flashy Californian, a man who flaunted his Jaguar and tailored suits. But it wasn’t the trappings of wealth that hooked Farr. Lukens understood his audience, how to appeal to a man’s soul.

“He came off as a God-fearing man,” Farr said. “He liked to quote Bible Scriptures and whatnot. That really spoke to me.”

So imagine Farr’s surprise when he saw this spiritual man taking a jaunt to Las Vegas two years later. Lukens gathered his stable of investors for a weekend of frolicking at the Oscar De La Hoya-Julio Cesar Chavez bout and was using the trip to recruit new clients.

The first red flag? Farr said he saw prostitutes in Lukens’ suite.

“This is a guy I thought to be very Christian-oriented,” Farr said. “He’s going after this first-round pick, doing his normal recruiting spiel. But there are hookers in the room.”

The next red flag?

“After the fight, there’s Don Lukens, my supposed financial adviser, the guy who’s telling me to pinch every penny ... there he is gambling $150,000 in blackjack,” Farr said. “There’s the guy I’m taking financial advice from and he’s gambling like that with his own money?”

As it turned out, Lukens was gambling with, and losing, his clients’ money. Within a few years he would be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and charged with defrauding some $25 million from about 200 of his investors. And many were past and present NFL players, including Farr, Simeon Rice, Eric Dickerson and Steve Atwater.

“Don Lukens,” Atwater said, “left his mark.”

And he wasn’t alone. Con artists have been fleecing victims since the beginning of time and highly paid athletes have always been obvious targets.

But in the NFL, the problem of scammers became a crisis for the league and its players. The NFL Players Association began monitoring the world of financial advisers after estimating that at least 78 players were defrauded of more than $43 million from 1999 through 2001.

The list of players who have been conned out of money reads like an all-time Pro Bowl roster: Atwater, Farr, Dickerson, Rice, Shannon Sharpe, Fred Taylor, Tony Boselli, Junior Seau.

But this is not the story of dumb jocks easily manipulated by outsiders. Farr, a University of Washington graduate, was a union representative during his NFL career, which ended after the 2000 season. Atwater was considered a team leader during his 11-year career.

Players such as Rice and Sharpe are men with bold personalities. Boselli and Seau are both known throughout the NFL for their character and intelligence.

“The truth is, it could happen to anybody,” Farr said. “You have veteran players . . . smart guys losing money. What would I tell guys now? When it comes to your money, what you’re earning, what your body is producing, do your homework. That’s what guys need to learn.”

With players losing so much money, the problem was substantial enough for the players association to institute a program requiring would-be investment advisers to register with the union, similar to the process agents go through.

The union hired former federal prosecutor Kenneth Ballen to head the program, which began in February 2002. Ballen said 486 advisers have registered, paying a $1,500 fee to be listed with the union.

After each applicant fills out a 17-page form, Ballen’s office checks the background, searching for the proper licensing and any trace of criminal activity.

“We prescreen people,” Ballen said. “We’re trying to keep (players) away from the con artists.”

Ballen said since the screening process began, the NFLPA has received no complaints from players exploited by registered financial advisers. Ballen did say that 20 players represented by Warren Ware, based in Orlando, Fla., who was not cleared by the NFLPA, have lost a significant amount of money in the last year.

In July 2003, the NFL sent out an advisory warning players to stay away from Ware’s firm, Ware Enterprise and Investments.

Ware, 32, and his firm were subsequently charged with the sale of unregistered securities and four counts of fraud, and the company was administratively dissolved in September for failing to file an annual report.

“The biggest challenge we have for the future is to convince the players not to deal with those who haven’t been registered,” Ballen said.

That’s the kind of guidance that players and their agents could have used the past decade. Many players have lost money with financial advisers who were not registered to perform such duties.

“Not a single one of those people who defrauded those players would have qualified to be in our program,” Ballen said. “We set up some standards for people.”

Farr, who retired three years ago and was unsuccessful in a comeback attempt with the 49ers last year, said the program is a positive step. If the program had been in place 10 years ago and Farr knew that Lukens wasn’t registered, Farr said he probably would have avoided him.

“It makes it easier for the player to make a decision,” Farr said. “If a guy is not even certified with the union, you have to wonder about him before you ever meet him. Look, I had Don checked out after I was with him. I found out there were 150 lawsuits or whatever. Maybe if I knew that before, I wouldn’t have met him in the first place.”

And meeting the athlete was often all it took. Lukens bragged of mingling with a range of celebrities, from Bill Cosby to Snoop Dogg. He apparently embellished his show business connections, but Farr was impressed by his list of NFL clients _ including Dickerson and Sharpe.

Lukens tailored his presentation to his prospective client. With an impressionable young player such as Farr, he was a devout Christian. When he first met the older and more established Atwater in 1996, Lukens presented himself as a confident and serious financier.

“He cold read me,” Farr said. “Just like a guy in a vaudeville show. He cold read a lot of people. The way he spoke to me, he didn’t speak to other people. However, whatever the language was, that’s how he spoke. He was very, very good at it. What’s going to wow a guy? What’s going to impress somebody? It was probably a lot easier to impress a rookie than a veteran.”

Atwater was a seven-year veteran with the Denver Broncos and one of the top defensive backs in the NFL when he met Lukens. Atwater said teammate Anthony Miller recommended him.

While Atwater was suspicious, he was lured by Lukens’ promise of a healthy return on his investments.

“My wife thought he was a snake from the start,” said Atwater, who retired after the 1999 season. “My attorney didn’t like him. But I was stubborn. More than anything, I was following what I heard from other guys. Players talk to each other and go with a guy. In my case, I had people telling me to watch this guy. But I went ahead anyway.”

Atwater lost $1.2 million in Lukens’ faulty real estate and investment deals. Farr lost about $200,000, while Rice ($2.4 million) and Dickerson ($1.835 million) were big losers. Other players who took financial hits included Sharpe, Sean Gilbert, and NBA players Bryon Russell and Kurt Thomas.

Lukens, from Oxnard, Calif., filed for bankruptcy in 2001, owing creditors more than $47 million. An investigation by the SEC showed he may have bilked investors for more than $25 million. Lukens settled a case with the SEC, agreeing to pay $4.75 million.

In July 2003, Lukens’ request for bankruptcy protection was denied in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Barbara, Calif. Lukens, whose last known residence was in Chicago, could not be reached.

“As long as there’s money, there are going to be people like Don,” said Farr. “You can’t cover everyone. There are people out there preying on young guys.”

And with salaries rising, NFL players _ really, all professional athletes _ will continue to be targets. Former Giants defensive lineman George Martin, a financial adviser in New York, said the predators can come from all places.

Martin, 51, runs the sports financial services department for the MONY Group and has a client list of about 100 athletes in all sports. He has heard the stories of players handing their money to unqualified advisers.

“They’re not necessarily the stereotypical scam artist,” said Martin, who played in 1975-88. “They could be family members or a friend. Athletes are selected because their fortune is so large and because so many athletes are uninformed. So the biggest question for the athlete becomes, who to trust? It’s not new. I went through it 25 years ago. There were people after our money back then, but think about how much more money there is now. I wouldn’t want to be going through it in this day and age.”

Athletes can live insulated lives, and financial scammers wrestle away their money by gaining their trust. Some notable scammers, such as William “Tank” Black, were agents with no investment training who stepped over the line and began handling their clients’ money.

Black was a prominent agent in football (Taylor, Ike Hilliard) and basketball (Vince Carter). He was considered a rising star in the agent game, but his world crumbled when he was charged with money laundering, swindling players and attempting to bribe people connected with the Louisiana State football program. The SEC ordered Black to repay his clients $12 million and he was sentenced to almost 12 years in prison on two charges.

Reached at federal prison in North Carolina last year, Black declined an interview request, responding in a letter that “there is so much I want to be able to show the press about my case and about myself but now is just not the time.”

It was Black’s high-profile case that caught the attention of the sports world. But it was just the most visible of several cases that created a layer of concern in the NFL.

“This has been a problem for a long, long time,” said Atwater, 37. “It’s good that the players association is getting involved, but the problem is that there will always be guys like Don Lukens. I hate to say it, but you can only do so much.”

Ballen acknowledges that the union’s program is merely for screening. The union neither recommends advisers nor vouches for their skill in the investment world.

Atwater said his experience of being referred to Lukens by a teammate is common in the NFL. Once a financial adviser impresses one player with a quick and significant return, the word will spread.

So for the potential scam artist, the hardest part is getting into the locker room. That’s why those in the inner circle have an advantage, whether they are college friends or distant family members.

Minnesota Vikings defensive back Antoine Winfield, the Buffalo Bills’ first-round pick out of Ohio State in 1999, lost $1.35 million when he trusted agent and financial adviser Dunyasha Mon Yetts. A former All-America wrestler at Ohio State, Yetts reportedly cultivated relationships with many Ohio State players in the 1990s and was a certified agent with the NFLPA when Winfield was drafted.

Yetts wound up filing for bankruptcy while under investigation by the SEC. He was charged in Columbus, Ohio, with defrauding 14 clients of $1.8 million and lost his certification with the NFLPA.

In June, the SEC barred Yetts from any association with brokers and stated that he “induced customers to entrust him with funds by falsely representing that he would invest their money in the stock market and other securities. Instead of investing those funds, Yetts misappropriated or diverted the money for other purposes, including paying personal and business expenses, making payments to earlier investors, and buying and selling securities for his own account or for other accounts he controlled ...”

Yetts reportedly befriended Winfield and assured him that his money was yielding a high return. The trust was forged when Winfield was in college, so his lack of skepticism was not surprising.

“Here you are making a lot of money and you don’t have the know-how to invest ... and a lot of these guys, they were brought up not really to trust people,” said Ross Tucker, a Princeton graduate and offensive lineman for the Bills. “So it’s tough when you get into a situation when you really have something that people want. So who do you trust? A lot of them maybe end up trusting people who are closest with them, which turns out to be wonderful in some cases and not so wonderful in other cases.”

Even lesser-known players such as Tucker are targeted, approached at restaurants, at bars or on airplanes, at golf tournaments or charity events.

The NFL’s biggest names are besieged whenever they are in public. San Francisco 49ers tight end Eric Johnson has seen it with former teammate Terrell Owens.

“People are always all over him,” Johnson said. “They all want something from him. He has to be hardened on the outside. He shuts people out who he doesn’t think are honest.”

Johnson, a Yale graduate, said he receives letters from financial advisers regularly. Most players get the same mail and the envelopes are invariably thrown away, unopened.

But if financial advisers can’t get to the player, they will try any means to break into the player’s world. The agent is the next step and the less prominent _ perhaps perceived as less savvy _ the better.

New Haven, Conn., attorney Douglas Lilly has been a certified agent with the NFLPA since 1999 and recently joined a Kansas City-based agency, but he has no clients signed to NFL contracts. Yet Lilly, who teaches sports law at Sacred Heart University, receives a steady stream of pitches from financial advisers _ most of whom are independent agents attempting to build their list of clients.

“Ever since (the NFLPA) started the financial adviser certification, I get calls and I get stuff mailed to me all the time,” Lilly said. “They’re trying to get clients referred to them. They feel that if they can get an NFL player, it’s going to be a windfall for them. ... And they don’t care if you don’t represent anyone in the NFL. It’s just a shotgun approach _ hit everyone and maybe you’ll get someone.”

Convincing agents is how John W. Gillette Jr. built his list of clients in the 1990s. Gillette was a San Diego-based financial adviser whose clients ranged from Oakland A’s third baseman Eric Chavez, a San Diego native who was then in the minor leagues, to Dolphins linebacker Junior Seau, then an All-Pro with the Chargers.

Like Lukens, Gillette was a pliable personality. He bragged to clients that he was a surfer, an activity that would impress a Gen-X Californian such as Chavez. He also used religion when necessary, dropping to his knees and praying with his most spiritual clients.

By the time he was sentenced to prison for 10 years in 1998, Gillette had duped his clients out of more than $11 million. He pleaded guilty to 38 counts of grand theft and forgery, and was paroled in 2001.

The SEC said Gillette operated as an unregistered investment adviser from June 1994 through June 1997. Among the SEC’s charges against Gillette were that he “made materially false and misleading statements” and “converted clients’ funds to his own use.”

Besides Seau, who lost $1.25 million, Gillette stole from Darren Woodson ($2.5 million), Tony Boselli ($250,000), Rob Johnson ($150,000), Stanley Richard ($1.25 million), Johnnie Morton ($100,000) and Je’Rod Cherry ($100,000).

Cherry, 30, a safety who has spent the past three seasons with the Patriots, said his agents _ the firm of Leigh Steinberg, Jeff Moorad and David Dunn _ sent him to Gillette. He met Gillette at Steinberg’s Newport Beach, Calif., office in 1996 and insists he was merely following the advice of his agents.

Dunn, who broke from the agency three years ago, is now Cherry’s sole agent.

“I was ignorant of investing,” Cherry said. “I made the mistake of trusting (his agents) without checking (Gillette) out.”

When Cherry later met Gillette at his upscale San Diego office, he immediately took note of the Seau poster on the wall. It was validation that another NFL player _ and one of the league’s greats at that _ trusted Gillette.

“It really, really is all word of mouth,” Atwater said. “Players trust each other.”

Cherry’s first meeting with Gillette lasted two hours and included a prayer session. They also listened to a Christian CD, with Gillette’s own daughter singing.

“He throws this religious spiel on you,” Cherry said.

Over the next two years, Cherry rarely saw or spoke to Gillette. He was receiving fictitious statements in the mail, showing the progress of a $100,000 municipal bond that Gillette never purchased on Cherry’s behalf.

“He was an outgoing guy, easy to relate to,” Cherry said. “He emphasized how tough he had it growing up, how he had to fight for everything he got. Unfortunately, that’s something that most African Americans can easily relate to.”

Cherry is not surprised that he is among at least 78 NFL players who have been scammed out of money.

“It’s a perfect place to be a predator,” Cherry said. “You’re dealing with people who are physically strong but mentally don’t have a clue.”

Martin, himself a victim of a scam artist in the mid-1980s, says it is as much about maturity as intelligence. The NFL lectures rookies on the risks they face and the players association offers background information on financial advisers, but forcing an athlete to partake in the programs is not easy.