- Federal authorities accused 15 former college basketball players of rigging games.
- Betting scandals are eroding trust in college and professional sports.
- An earlier nationwide poll found Americans indifferent about the impact sports gambling.
Federal prosecutors charged more than a dozen college basketball players with rigging games in the NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in Philadelphia.
Also Thursday, a website that covers gambling industry news released survey results that show more than half of bettors say betting-related scandals have reduced their trust in professional sports.
The 70-page indictment alleges that 20 people — 15 former college basketball players and five others described as fixers — were involved in rigging college games in the United States and professional games in China. They are charged with bribery in sporting contests, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud.
Prosecutors allege the fixers “engaged in a point-shaving scheme involving more than 39 players on more than 17 different NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams who then fixed and attempted to fix more than 29” games for millions of dollars in bets.
According to the indictment, the fixers recruited the players with “bribe payments” ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game. The fixers, including two men who prosecutors say worked in the training and development of basketball players, placed large bets on those games.
“In placing these wagers on games they had fixed, the defendants defrauded sports books, as well as individual sports bettors, who were all unaware that the defendants had corruptly manipulated the outcome of these games that should have been decided fairly, based on genuine competition and the best efforts of the players,” according to the indictment.
The fixers also allegedly targeted players on teams that were underdogs in games and sought to have them fail to cover the point spreads in those games.
The alleged sports gambling conspiracy started in September 2022 when the fixers allegedly first started to bribe players in the Chinese Basketball Association to engage in “point shaving, where someone is paid to manipulate a game’s final margin of victory and not necessarily the win-loss outcome, per NBC News.
Prosecutors say those players manipulated games involving Nicholls State, Tulane, Northwestern State, Saint Louis, LaSalle, Fordham, Buffalo, DePaul, Robert Morris, Southern Miss, North Carolina A&T, Kennesaw State, Coppin State, New Orleans, Abilene Christian, Eastern Michigan and Alabama State.
Former college players named in the indictment are Alberto Laureano, Arlando Arnold, Simeon Cottle, Kevin Cross, Bradley Ezewiro, Shawn Fulcher, Carlos Hart, Markeese Hastings, Cedquavious Hunter, Oumar Koureissi, Da’Sean Nelson, Demond Robinson, Camian Shell, Dyquavion Short, Airion Simmons and Jalen Terry.
More sports gambling scandals
Thursday’s indictment is the latest game-rigging scandal to hit college or professional sports.
Last fall, more than 50 people, including past and current NBA and MLB players and mobsters, were indicted in four separate federal and state sports gambling cases.
A case federal agents dubbed “Operation Nothing But Bet” alleges Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and five others used nonpublic injury and lineup information to place fraudulent bets on NBA games worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. In a case called “Operation Royal Flush,” Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and 30 others, including members of organized crime, were charged in schemes to rig illegal poker games.
In the baseball case, two Cleveland Guardians pitchers, one a three-time All-Star, allegedly accepted thousands of dollars in bribes to help gamblers in their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on bets placed on the speed and outcome of their pitches.
The New Jersey attorney general charged 14 people for their alleged roles in a multimillion-dollar illegal sports betting ring that involved college athletes and had links to organized crime.
Also last November, the NCAA announced that six former men’s college basketball players at New Orleans, Mississippi Valley State and Arizona State manipulated their performances in games for betting purposes or shared information with known bettors. Two of them — Cedquavious Hunter and Dyquavion Short — were named in the federal indictment unsealed Thursday.
Danny Funt, who chronicled the rise of American sports gambling in a new book titled “Everybody Loses” due out this month, previously told the Deseret News those cases didn’t surprise those plugged into what’s going on in sports gambling, and could be the tip of the iceberg.
“I just think the argument that it’s somehow good for sports by making it easier to police and prosecute gambling-related corruption is just such a flimsy, downright disingenuous argument to me. As that sort of bad news keeps coming I don’t see how anyone could hold that belief seriously,” he said.
“In fact, there’s so many more ways to manipulate games no matter what you’re able to monitor, the risk of corruption is, as I see it, undeniably greater.”
Eroding trust in sports
A survey of 2,000 sports bettors Casino Guru News released Thursday found 54% say betting scandals have reduced their trust in professional sports. When asked whether sports betting has made professional sports less fair, 41% agree and 36% disagree, while nearly 23% say they are unsure.
“Confidence in the fairness of professional sports is no longer the default among bettors,” per Casino Guru News.
“Taken together, the findings point to a clear erosion of trust. Betting-related scandals are not being dismissed as isolated incidents, and concerns about integrity are no longer fringe views among bettors — they are increasingly part of how sports are watched, judged, and discussed."
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll last November asked 2,225 U.S. adults whether sports gambling is good or bad for society and whether it’s good or bad for sports. The results of the survey conducted by Morning Consult found Americans somewhat indifferent about the impact sports betting has on society and sports.
When asked, “Do you think legal betting on professional and collegiate sports is a good or a bad thing for society?”, 45% say it’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Less than a third, 30%, say it’s a bad thing, while 14% say it’s a good thing. Another 12% don’t know.
When asked, “Do you think legal betting on professional and collegiate sports is a good or a bad thing for sports?”, 40% say it’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Again, less than a third, 31%, say it’s a bad thing, while 18% say it’s a good thing. Another 12% don’t know.
“I just feel like this all happened so quickly for people that they didn’t necessarily have a chance to digest what the stakes were, what the dangers were,” Funt told the Deseret News in November.
“It happened so quickly that the gambling industry and their business partners had such a powerful lobby and public platform to assure people that this was, if not neutral, actually a good thing for sports and society.”