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Does Tom Brady Have Nephews? A Defector Investigation

11:53 AM EDT on August 30, 2022

Tom Brady, wearing a beanie, yells during the 2019 Super Bowl parade
Billie Weiss/Getty Images|

Tom Brady, several surgeries ago, yells in celebration (we assume) at the Patriots’ Super Bowl parade in 2019.

Does Tom Brady have any siblings? Do those siblings, if they exist, have kids? Do those hypothetical children identify as male? These are questions that have vexed football analysts for decades. Over his long, successful football career, Tom Brady has been poked, prodded, analyzed, even stripped naked. We know a lot about him as a player.

We also know a lot about his personal life! He dated the actress Bridget Moynahan for about three years. They broke up. Then it turned out she was pregnant! She had a son. Brady began dating Gisele Bündchen the same year he and Moynahan split; he said a friend set them up on a blind date. What a pal! And of course Brady also has that stupid diet, which we also know quite a bit about.

But siblings? Nephews? We just didn’t know. That was just the opening a New Jersey man needed. Yesterday Scott V. Spina Jr. of Roseland was sentenced to three years in federal prison for posing as a former New England Patriots player to buy Super Bowl rings. (Roseland is in North Jersey; do not blame this on the fine folk in Camden, the greater Pine Barrens, or Mike Trout City.)

Presumably the ‘J’ here is for Jostens. If only the Trump warrant redactions were done like this!

Federal prosecutors said the plot went like this: Spina bought a Super Bowl LI ring from an unidentified Pats player in 2017. (Spina, who will remain perfectly in character throughout the rest of this story, paid him with a bad check.) From that player, Spina learned that he could purchase smaller rings made for friends and family. After selling the player’s ring to a broker for $63,000, Spina posed as a Patriots player and ordered three more rings with “BRADY” on them. His story was that the rings were for Brady’s baby. He paid about $25K for the three rings. (An auction house later valued one at $29,750. If I ever win the Super Bowl I am changing my name to Tom Brady and buying so many rings to resell.) The broker then got nervous. To quote from the government release:

After agreeing to buy the three rings for $81,500—nearly three times what Spina paid for the rings—the buyer started to believe that Brady did not have nephews, and he tried to withdraw from the deal.

No matter to Spina; he sold them to an auction house for a cool 100 grand. The government says one ring was later sold at auction for $337,219 in February 2018. It appears to be the ring sold that month by Goldin Auctions for a reported $344,927, which at the time was a record for a Super Bowl ring. Per Darren Rovell, of course, the head of the San Diego Chicken was sold in the same auction for $9,820. That was, presumably, not a big scam like the ring. It is unclear what responsibility, if any, Goldin Auctions has to its buyers to make sure that the Super Bowl ring they’re selling was not obtained under false pretenses by a North Jersey man. (Update: Goldin tells Defector the sale was voided and the buyer refunded “long ago.” So the answer is: They do have responsibility!)

This brings us back to the broker’s question, though: Does Tom Brady even have nephews? For a long time this was an unanswerable question—a known unknown, if you will. The resources of the federal government are basically limitless, however, and they have apparently discovered the truth about Brady’s siblings and those siblings kids’ genders. This information was presumably declassified and then released it to the proper media outlets, too. A website called Oldest.org now has a page titled, “Tom Brady’s 4 Siblings: Ranked Oldest to Youngest.”

The information is still not quite complete, as it features section headings like “4. Maureen Brady (Age Unknown)” and “3. Nancy Brady (Age Unknown).” One might say the webpage really doesn’t live up to its title. Another might say Oldest.org is not the most reputable website for information on Tom Brady’s nephews in the first place. Still a third person might note that a website that features sentences like “Not much is known about Nancy Brady in the absence of a social media presence” is probably a completely useless website.

Those people should all shut up! This is my article! There were worse options to cite here, like The Sun. After reviewing the publicly available information, I can conclude that Tom Brady does indeed have three big sisters: Maureen, Nancy, and Julie. Oldest.org did not contain the full story, however, so I had to go to another highly reputable website, Daily Mail. And what I learned in a photo caption there would shock me.

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady shared a family photo following Sunday's Super Bowl win, captioning it 'It takes a team. And so much love'. The photo features in the back row from left Brady's sister Julie, father Tom Brady Sr, sister Maureen, brother-in-law Steve Bonelli (Nancy's husband), sister Nancy, mother Galynn, wife Gisele Bundchen and brother-in-law Kevin Youkilis (Julie's husband). Center, in Brady's arms are daughter Vivian (left) and nephew Jeremy. In the front row, from left are nephew Zachary, another nephew, nieces Hannah and Jordan, sons Benjamin and Jack, and niece Maya.

Nephew Jeremy! Nephew Zachary! Another nephew! Wow. Convictions can be overturned even if the defendant pleaded guilty, right? Alert the lawyers. I think we have a case on our hands here. Tom. Brady. Has. Nephews.

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