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Citing unnamed sources close to the situation, Palm Beach Post staff writers Jose Lambiet and Joe Schad are reporting that Dolphins running back Ricky Williams faces a $650,000 fine after violating the NFL's substance abuse policy.

According to Lambiet and Schad, this was Williams' second violation since he has been with the Dolphins. Williams, 26, is appealing the fine that the league imposed when a drug test he took on Dec. 10, 2003, turned up positive for marijuana. Another failed test would result in a four-game suspension.

Sources told Lambiet and Schad that Williams was seen at NFL headquarters in New York on April 16, the date of the appeal. But the former first-round draft pick says otherwise.

"I'm in good standing with the NFL and the Dolphins," Williams told the Post Friday. "There is not a story here. I was in New York a few weeks ago and I did visit the league headquarters.

"I guess that's how rumors get started. But I was just visiting friends in the city and I just decided to go in. I will be at training camp on Tuesday."

But according to NFL documents seen by the Post staffers, Williams' lawyer, high-profile criminal attorney Gary Ostrow, filed arguments with the league titled "NFL vs. Player #909965J." In it, Ostrow questions the integrity of the league's drug-testing system.

Williams scored a 15 on the league's testing scale -- the NFL's lowest positive score and consistent with what an occasional marijuana user would score. Another sample came back at 14 (traces of marijuana at a concentration of 14 nanograms per milliliter of urine).

Under league policy, two samples are taken at test time. If the "A" sample is positive, the player can request that the "B" sample be tested. A second sample need only show that the substance is evident for the first sample to be declared valid.

"Ricky is pretty confident he's going to beat this thing," a source told Lambiet and Schad. "When he took the test, for example, he was dehydrated after exercising. Dehydration sometimes causes people who would be negative to test positive."

The league is expected to announce to Williams its decision at the end of the month.

Lambiet and Schad went on to suggest the sum of $650,000 is consistent with the league's fining guidelines -- an amount 4/17 of a player's annual salary -- for someone who tests positive while in Stage Two of the NFL's intervention program. Williams, who said he is not in an intervention program, first tested positive for marijuana shortly after arriving in Miami from New Orleans in May 2002, sources said.

Because it was his first offense, he was placed in Stage One of the intervention program, which lasts up to 60 days. In Stage Two, a player can be tested as many as 10 times a month.

As determined by a medical director, he also must undergo weekly drug group-therapy sessions and call a special NFL hot line, sometimes hourly, to report his whereabouts.

"He was just weeks away from getting off the intervention program," one of Lambiet and Schad sources said. "Officially, he would have been off intervention on Super Bowl Sunday. He has tested negative more than 100 times before.

"But then, this thing happened. He now gets back into intervention for another two years."

Stay tuned. ... I'll have more as further details come to light.