Alejandro Guerrero

The New England Patriots have forged a business relationship with the company he owns with Tom Brady, the TB12 Sports Therapy Center, at the Patriots Place complex adjacent to Gillette Stadium. Since the center opened in 2013, the team has paid the company for Guerrero and his staff to provide treatment services and nutritional advice to multiple Patriots players. Some of Guerrero’s former associates also wondered why Brady and the Patriots would want to forge financial relationships with an entrepreneur whose history of legal trouble includes business partners accusing him of fraud. The financial arrangement with TB12 has continued despite complaints from the team’s medical and training staffs to Patriots coach Bill Belichick about Guerrero’s alternative health practices and questionable background. Guerrero’s admitted falsehoods through the years have included him claiming he conducted a clinical study in which all but eight of 200 terminally ill patients lived at least five years by following his alternative health recommendations. He also said in a deposition that he had once falsely claimed to have sold a company for $500 million to Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic. Born in San Bernardino, Calif., the son of Argentine immigrants, Guerrero graduated in 1983 from Monrovia (Calif.) High School, where he played junior varsity tennis and performed in stage plays such as “The Miracle Worker.’’ At Monrovia, he was two years ahead of Alicia McGlone, whom he married in 1988. Financial distress soon followed, and by 1992 the Guerreros filed their first bankruptcy petition. Compounding their woes was the death of Alicia’s father, Vayland McGlone, in 1991, at age 50. Guerrero has said McGlone’s death inspired him to become an alternative health practitioner. Guerrero falsely portrayed himself as a medical doctor and lied that he had obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology. In fact, he attended Glendale (Calif.) Community College, the Santa Monica School of Massage, and the now-defunct Samra University of Oriental Medicine in Los Angeles, where he received a degree in traditional Chinese medicine. His therapy work connected him with three of his first prominent clients: McGinest, former NFL player Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, and the late professional boxer Genaro (Chicanito) Hernandez. He became so close to them that they visited his home and family.