Ex-NFL linebacker sentenced to eight months in prison on federal fraud charges

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Former University of Alabama and NFL linebacker Saleem Rasheed has been sentenced to eight months in prison on federal fraud charges.

U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said the one-time San Francisco 49er was also sentenced Wednesday to eight months of home detention following his prison term. Rasheed pleaded guilty in March to federal charges of food stamp fraud and falsely claiming a woman as his wife on immigration forms, and U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre sentenced him Wednesday.

Separately, he was arrested April 14 on state charges that he engaged in sex acts with two female students while teaching and coaching at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham.

Rasheed played football at Alabama from 1999-2001. The 31-year-old Bessemer man had played four years in the NFL before moving to the Canadian Football League for one year.

Rasheed worked as a teacher from 2009 until last year, in the Jefferson County and Birmingham school systems. He has paid $5,551 in restitution to the government for food stamp assistance he received while saying he was unemployed, and was also fined $500. He was teaching in Jefferson County at the time.

Rasheed acknowledged in his guilty plea that he signed a Homeland Security form in April 2010 for a woman he claimed was his wife, while married to another woman.