Federal prosecutors secured indictments against 20 people accused of rigging college basketball games in America and pro hoops contests in China, according to court papers unsealed in Philadelphia on Thursday.
The suspects face a slew of charges that include alleged bribery in sports, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and aiding and abetting.
The suspects include several former college basketball players: 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.
Trainers Jalen Smith and Roderick Winkler and “high-stakes sports gamblers” Marves Fairley and Shane Hennen were also named in the indictments.
The scheme allegedly began in September 2022 when defendants first started to bribe players in the Chinese Basketball Association for “point shaving,” when someone is paid to manipulate a game’s final margin of victory and not necessarily the win-loss outcome.
Fairley and Hennen initially targeted Antonio Blakeney, who was not named in this indictment, who was playing for the Jiangsu Dragons of the CBA, prosecutors said.
Blakeney, who played for LSU, “agreed to participate in the scheme and then recruited other players from Jiangsu,” according to court papers.
In a March 6, 2023 game, Blakeney’s Dragons were 11.5–point underdogs to the Guangdong Southern Tigers. Fairley and Hennen bet $198,3000 via BetRivers Sportsbook on the favorites to cover that spread, authorities said.
Blakeney, who averaged 32 points per game that season, scored just 11 in that contest, leading for a 127-96 spread-covering win for the Tigers.
“Blakeney underperformed in and influenced the game as he and the fixers had agreed,” according to the indictment.
The indictment went on to cite other games allegedly fixed by Blakeney. And then in April of 2023, after the CBA season had finished, Fairley “placed a package into Antonio Blakeney’s storage unit in Florida, which contained nearly $200,000 in cash, representing bribe payments and proceeds from the fixed CBA games,” according to the indictment.
The scheme moved to college basketball games in the United States during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, prosecutors said, as Blakeney allegedly “agreed to recruit NCAA players who would accept bribe payments,” court papers said.
Payments “ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game” were made to the American college players.
These 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, the indictment said.
This sweeping FBI investigation marks the latest gambling scandal to rock high-level U.S. sports.
NBA journeyman Terry Rozier was arrested on Oct. 23 and accused of conspiring with gamblers to pass on insider knowledge for wagers.
Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz were arrested in November and accused of working with gamblers to bet on individual pitches they threw during games.
David K. Li and Isabel Yip contributed.
