In the second sweeping federal indictment targeting the most pervasive point-shaving scandal in North American history, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Thursday announced the indictments of 20 recent men’s college basketball players from 17 schools for allegedly attempting to fix games via performance manipulation in the 2023–24 and ’24–25 seasons. Officials say more than 39 players from more than 17 teams attempted to fix at least 29 games. The feds also filed charges against six other people associated with the scheme, including former NBA player and college standout Antonio Blakeney and individuals who worked as personal trainers or AAU coaches.
According to the federal indictment, the scheme began with attempts in the 2022–23 season to fix games in the Chinese Basketball Association. Blakeney is alleged to have been recruited by scheme organizers previously identified by Sports Illustrated, Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley, to shave points while playing in the CBA.
From there, the feds say, the three men enlisted others with connections to players to launch a game-fixing operation in college basketball. They recruited players at the following schools to fix point spreads for the first halves or entire games: Nicholls State, Tulane, Northwestern (La.) State, Saint Louis, La Salle, Fordham, Buffalo, DePaul, Robert Morris, Southern Mississippi, North Carolina A&T, Kennesaw State, Coppin State, New Orleans, Abilene Christian, Eastern Michigan and Alabama State.
These indictments follow the October arrests of 34 people in New York in connection with illegal wagering on NBA games and rigged poker games. Those arrests included three current or former NBA players—Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat, Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and former player and assistant coach Damon Jones—plus dozens of individuals with Mafia ties. The crossover suspects in the two cases are Hennen and Fairley.
In the college scheme, Fairley, Hennen and their associates primarily targeted players on losing teams at lower-level NCAA Division I programs.
While the federal indictment is vast in scope, it still does not touch upon all known cases that the NCAA has been investigating.
The NCAA announced in September that it was pursuing infractions cases involving 13 former players from six different schools: Eastern Michigan, Temple, Arizona State, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T and Mississippi Valley State. The NCAA subsequently sanctioned former players from four of those schools, with other inquiries ongoing. Sources tell SI that more than a dozen NCAA gambling-related investigations remain ongoing.
New Orleans players Cedquavious Hunter, Dyquavian Short and Jamond Vincent were found by the NCAA to have manipulated their performances in multiple games in exchange for money during the 2024–25 season. Gambling compliance monitoring services noted suspicious wagering on five Privateers games last season—against McNeese State, Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Southeastern Louisiana, Incarnate Word and East Texas A&M. New Orleans was 1–4 in those games, beating only East Texas A&M. The players were dismissed from the team in February ’25. Hunter and Short were among those indicted Thursday.
In the Mississippi Valley State infractions case, former players Donovan Sanders and Alvin Stredic were found to have committed Level I NCAA violations. According to the infractions report, Sanders discussed “throwing the game” against Tulsa in December 2024 on the phone, according to an unnamed teammate. The report says, “Sanders asked ‘Student-Athlete 1’ to get on the phone with the unknown individual because the individual wanted to know that Sanders had another teammate who would participate in the scheme, as the unknown individual was placing a bet.” Gambling compliance monitoring services also found unusual wagering on Mississippi Valley’s game against Alabama A&M on Jan. 6, 2025.
Former Eastern Michigan players Jalin Billingsley, Da’Sean Nelson and Jalen Terry were sanctioned for refusing to cooperate with the NCAA investigation into suspicious first-half betting on a game in January 2025. Nelson and Terry were among those indicted Thursday.
Former Arizona State player B.J. Freeman was involved in a different case. According to the infractions report, Freeman instructed his then-girlfriend to place bets on his performance, but told her to wager on the “overs” on his statistical totals. Freeman also provided information to others to bet on his performances.
“While the facts and alleged behaviors in each case vary, they include student-athletes betting on and against their own teams, sharing information with third parties for purposes of sports betting, knowingly manipulating scoring or game outcomes and/or refusing to participate in the enforcement staff's investigation,” the NCAA stated in its release in September.
In September, the NCAA also announced permanent bans for gambling-related violations by two former Fresno State players and one from San Jose State—Mykell Robinson and Jalen Weaver of the Bulldogs and Steven Vasquez of the Spartans, who had been at Fresno State the previous three seasons.
Prior to these two criminal cases, federal prosecutors charged five people with illegal wagers on the performances of former NBA player Jontay Porter. Four of them—Porter, Timothy McCormack, Mahmud Mollah and Long Phi “Bruce” Pham—have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. A fifth defendant, Ammar Awawdeh, has been indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery. Awawdeh has been negotiating a plea agreement since at least March 2025, according to joint filings between his attorney and U.S. attorneys in the Eastern District of New York.
Suspicions about corruption in the college game first spilled into public view in March 2024, when suspicious wagering was flagged on the UAB at Temple game. The first-half spread of that game jumped enough in UAB’s favor to garner the attention of gambling regulators, who issued an alert to casinos and shut down wagering on the game. The Blazers led Temple 47–32 at halftime, easily covering the first-half spread. Other Temple games from the 2023–24 season came under scrutiny as well.
Later in 2024, Temple leading scorer Hysier Miller became a target of multiple probes into the Owls. His transfer to Virginia Tech was nullified by the Hokies, who dropped him from the team before the ’24–25 season. Miller was interviewed by NCAA investigators for several hours in November ’24 according to his attorney, Jason Bologna. He played professionally in ’24–25 in Germany.
NCAA president Charlie Baker has advocated repeatedly for the elimination of prop bets on the individual performances of college players. He met last week with NBA commissioner Adam Silver to discuss that issue, among other topics.
“The Association has and will continue to aggressively pursue sports betting violations in college athletics using a layered integrity monitoring program that covers over 22,000 contests, but we still need the remaining states, regulators and gaming companies to eliminate threats to integrity—such as collegiate prop bets—to better protect athletes and leagues from integrity risks and predatory bettors. We also will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement. We urge all student-athletes to make well-informed choices to avoid jeopardizing the game and their eligibility,” Baker said in a statement Thursday.
The October indictments, part of what FBI director Kash Patel called “a wide-sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra,” rocked pro basketball. A grand jury indicted Rozier and Jones alongside Rozier’s friend Deniro Laster, Eric Earnest, Hennen and Fairley. Hennen was arrested in January and has been negotiating a plea deal.
Billups was not indicted in that case—but “Co-Conspirator 8” is described in the indictment as a resident of Oregon who was “an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021.” That describes Billups, who was placed on leave by the Trail Blazers and remains away from the team.
The indictment alleges that Co-Conspirator 8 “told the defendant Eric Earnest that the Trail Blazers were going to be tanking [i.e., intentionally losing] to increase their odds of getting a better draft pick in the upcoming NBA draft. Co-Conspirator 8 told Earnest, before the news was publicly announced, that several of the Trail Blazers’ best players, including Player 1, an individual whose identity is known to the Grand Jury, would not be playing in the March 24 Game” against the Bulls. The gambling ring then allegedly wagered “approximately $100,000” against the Trail Blazers. Portland lost, 124–96.
According to New York City police commissioner Jessica Tisch, before a game between the Hornets and Pelicans on March 23, 2023, when Rozier was on Charlotte’s roster, Rozier “allegedly let others close to him know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury. Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his ‘under’ statistics.”
Rozier, who started the game, played only nine minutes, 34 seconds.
The allegation against Rozier is virtually the same as what Porter admitted to in court. Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud after rigging his own performance to ensure the under on prop bets would win. Porter said during his plea hearing that he did it “in order to get out from under large gambling debts accumulated over time.” Authorities have said one of the people Porter owed significantly gambling debts to was Awawdeh, who was indicted in that case and has been negotiating a plea deal. Awawdeh was also indicted for his alleged role in the poker scheme.
The second case involved rigged poker games. According to Patel and the Justice Department, four of the New York mafia’s five families were involved in the scheme: the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families. They say the perpetrators used poker chip tray analyzers, special contact lenses or eyeglasses, and an X-ray table to dupe players out of hundreds of thousands of dollars—and that Billups and Jones were in on the scheme. Former professional boxer Curtis Meeks also was indicted.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as 20 College Basketball Players Indicted in Federal Point-Shaving Case.
