Basketball Gambling Investigation: NBA and NCAA Charges and Fallout

The federal basketball gambling investigation is actually two overlapping cases: a Brooklyn prosecution charging 34 people over rigged high-stakes poker games and NBA insider betting, and a Philadelphia prosecution charging 26 people in an NCAA point-shaving ring that fixed college games for professional gamblers. Together they name 60 defendants, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, former NBA player Damon Jones, and current and former players from at least 17 Division I men’s basketball programs. Two defendants have already pleaded guilty, and prosecutors say the investigation is continuing.

The NCAA Point-Shaving Case

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania unsealed a 70-page indictment in January 2026 charging 26 people with running what U.S. Attorney David Metcalf called an “extensive international criminal conspiracy” to fix basketball games. According to the indictment, the ring bribed more than 39 athletes across at least 17 NCAA Division I men’s basketball programs, wagered at least $3.6 million on more than 29 fixed or attempted-to-be-fixed games, and operated during the 2023–24 and 2024–25 seasons.¹²

Prosecutors say the fixers recruited players through social media, texts, phone calls, and in-person meetings, using coaching and training connections to build trust. They deliberately targeted athletes on underdog teams who weren’t earning much through Name, Image, and Likeness deals, reasoning that a $10,000 to $30,000 bribe per game would be hard for those players to refuse. Bribed players would underperform just enough to keep their team from covering the point spread for either the first half or the full game, and the conspirators would bet accordingly. Cash was then delivered to campuses; in one instance, a fixer texted a photo of $100,000 in cash while on a plane to prove the payoff was on the way.³¹

Six people are identified as the principal fixers: trainer Jalen Smith, professional gamblers Marves Fairley and Shane Hennen, former NBA player Antonio Blakeney, Roderick Winkler, and Alberto Laureano. The remaining defendants include 17 former or current college basketball players and other associates. Schools whose players were directly implicated include Nicholls State, Tulane, Northwestern State, Saint Louis, La Salle, Fordham, Buffalo, DePaul, Robert Morris, Southern Miss, North Carolina A&T, Kennesaw State, Coppin State, New Orleans, Abilene Christian, Eastern Michigan, and Alabama State.⁴⁵

All 26 defendants face charges of bribery in sporting contests, which carries up to five years per count, plus conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud, each carrying up to 20 years per count. The FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office led the two-year investigation, which relied heavily on intercepted text messages and financial records. Metcalf said the current indictment represents only a portion of total participants and that the investigation is continuing.³²

Jalen Smith became the first defendant to plead guilty. In March 2026, he entered pleas to wire fraud and bribery charges in federal court in Philadelphia, along with a separate weapons count for possessing a firearm as a prohibited person due to a 2018 drug conviction. His attorney said Smith pleaded guilty “to get the matter behind him, serve whatever sentence he’ll be given and move forward in his life in a positive direction.”⁶⁷

The NBA Case

On October 23, 2025, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York announced two related indictments charging 34 people. One case targets rigged high-stakes poker games; the other targets a scheme to exploit nonpublic NBA injury information for sports betting.⁸

Rigged Poker Games

The poker indictment names 31 defendants, including Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA player and Cavaliers assistant coach Damon Jones. Prosecutors allege the games were rigged using poker chip tray analyzers, marked cards, altered shuffling machines, and hidden cameras, and that at least $7.15 million was stolen from victims since 2019. Associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families are alleged to have facilitated the games; 13 of the 34 defendants across the two indictments are identified as organized crime members or associates.⁸⁹

Insider Injury Information

The insider-betting indictment names six defendants, including Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Damon Jones, who appears in both cases. Prosecutors allege Jones sold confidential injury information about Los Angeles Lakers players, including LeBron James and Anthony Davis, to a network of bettors while working as an unofficial coach. Rozier was accused of tipping off a friend that he planned to leave a March 23, 2023, game early, faking a lower-leg injury so associates could bet against his performance.⁸

In May 2026, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding two felony counts against Rozier: sports bribery and honest services fraud. The new charges allege he accepted a $100,000 bribe, later negotiated down to $70,000 after he performed better than expected, in exchange for leaving the March 2023 game early. Rozier’s attorney, Jim Trusty, called the new counts “new theories trotted out in the hope that something sticks.” The Heat waived Rozier in April 2026.¹⁰¹¹

How the Two Cases Overlap

The Philadelphia and Brooklyn cases share defendants. Fairley and Hennen, the two professional gamblers at the center of the college point-shaving ring, are also named in the NBA sports-betting indictment. Damon Jones appears in both NBA indictments.⁸

Where the NBA Cases Stand

The NBA placed Billups and Rozier on immediate leave after the October 2025 charges. Billups was arrested in Portland and released on $5 million bail; Rozier was arrested in Orlando and released on bond, with his $6 million home used as collateral. Both pleaded not guilty at their late-2025 arraignments. The Trail Blazers named Tiago Splitter interim head coach.¹¹⁹

Damon Jones became the first NBA-connected defendant to plead guilty. On April 28, 2026, he pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one for selling insider information and one for his role in the rigged poker games. Jones admitted he had served as a “face card,” using his celebrity to lure players into three rigged games between 2020 and 2023. “I knew these games were rigged and that players were being cheated,” he told the court. He agreed to forfeit $73,000, with additional restitution possible at sentencing, scheduled for January 6, 2027. The recommended range under his plea deal is 48 to 63 months for the poker case and 21 to 27 months for the insider-betting case.¹²

Billups’ trial is set for November 2, 2026. Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Ramon Reyes Jr. to push the date to January 2027, citing scheduling conflicts and ongoing plea negotiations, but the judge denied the request at a June 2026 status conference. The prosecution’s evidence disclosure includes roughly 259 hours of audio and video recordings across 1,580 files, more than 100,000 pages of financial and phone records, over 800 pages of surveillance photographs, and electronic data from multiple devices. As of mid-2026, six defendants in the poker case have entered guilty pleas, and prosecutors said they were in active negotiations with up to 15 more.¹³¹⁴

NCAA Discipline Running Alongside the Criminal Case

The NCAA’s own enforcement staff had been investigating gambling violations at many of the affected schools for over a year before the federal indictment landed. In November 2025, the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions permanently banned six players from three schools for betting-related game manipulation:

New Orleans: Cedquavious Hunter, Dyquavian Short, and Jamond Vincent manipulated their performance in seven games between December 2024 and January 2025, conspiring with outside bettors to lose by more than the spread. Text messages showed discussions about receiving $5,000 and instructions to “throw the game.”
Mississippi Valley State: Donovan Sanders and Alvin Stredic provided inside information to third parties for betting on games, including a January 2025 contest against Alabama A&M. Sanders was also overheard discussing “throwing” a December 2024 game.
Arizona State: BJ Freeman shared information with a bettor and with his then-girlfriend to influence prop bets on his own stats, including points, turnovers, assists, and three-pointers.

All six received permanent ineligibility, the mandatory NCAA penalty for athletes who bet on their own games or share information for betting purposes. None of the schools were penalized institutionally, as the NCAA determined that coaching staffs and other players were unaware of the activity.¹⁵¹⁶

By the time the federal indictment was announced, the NCAA had already issued lifetime bans to four of the indicted players for non-cooperation or similar conduct. In total, the NCAA’s enforcement staff opened gambling probes involving roughly 40 athletes from 20 schools over the prior year, permanently banning 11 athletes from seven schools and citing 13 from eight schools for refusing to cooperate.¹⁷

Individual schools responded to the indictment with player suspensions. Kennesaw State suspended Simeon Cottle indefinitely. Eastern Michigan suspended Carlos Hart from all team activities. Texas Southern removed Oumar Koureissi from its roster entirely.¹⁸

Congressional and Regulatory Fallout

The scandals have drawn attention from Congress. On May 20, 2026, the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Data Privacy held a hearing titled “No Sure Bets: Protecting Sports Integrity in America.” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who chairs the subcommittee, said the hearing was “the first of what I think will be several” as lawmakers evaluate whether a federal regulatory framework is needed for sports betting. Legal sports wagering has expanded rapidly since the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA, and 38 states and Washington, D.C., now permit some form of it.¹⁹

A Tennessee sports wagering official testified that her state alone has investigated 25 potential integrity cases, referring 13 of them to the FBI. The Senate has unanimously voted to ban its own members and staff from using prediction markets, and several bills have been introduced to address insider trading on those platforms and ban digital betting ads targeting minors.¹⁹²⁰

NCAA President Charlie Baker has formally urged state regulators and gambling companies to eliminate prop bets on college athletes, arguing they make individual players targets. The NCAA has also reversed an earlier consideration of loosening gambling restrictions for student-athletes, and a newly established College Sports Commission tip line accepts anonymous reports related to NIL payments and athlete compensation, in recognition that lower-paid athletes are most vulnerable to bribery.²¹¹⁷

The FBI has set up a public tip line for the NCAA case, which callers are instructed to reference as “NCAA point-shaving.” Prosecutors in both the Philadelphia and Brooklyn cases have said more charges are possible.³

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ESPN. Inside Six College Basketball Games Feds Say Were Fixed
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CBS News. Rigging College Basketball Games FBI Investigation
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U.S. Department of Justice. 26 People Charged in Alleged Bribery and Point-Shaving Scheme
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NBC News. 20 Charged in Basketball Game-Fixing Scandal
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NBC Philadelphia. 20 Charged in Basketball Game-Fixing Scandal
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Courthouse News Service. Man Who Helped Recruit Players Into a Sprawling NCAA Basketball Point-Shaving Scheme Pleads Guilty
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ESPN. Fixer in NCAA Basketball Point-Shaving Scheme Pleads Guilty
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CNBC. NBA Billups Rozier Sports Betting Arrests Gambling
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Yahoo Sports. Timeline of FBI’s Probe Into Alleged NBA Sports Betting Scheme
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The Athletic (New York Times). Terry Rozier Bribe Charge Gambling Investigation
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Yahoo Sports. Damon Jones First to Plead Guilty After Gambling Probe
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LA Magazine. 259 Hours of Secret Recordings Loom Over NBA Mob Case
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Yahoo Sports. Judge Targeting Nov 2 Trial Date for Chauncey Billups
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NCAA. 6 Former Men’s Basketball Student-Athletes Committed NCAA Violations Involving Betting-Related Game Manipulation
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CBS Sports. NCAA Bans Six College Basketball Players After Gambling Investigation
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CBS Sports. College Basketball Players Point-Shaving Fixing Games FBI Scandal
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Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Key Facts in the Latest NCAA Basketball Betting Investigation
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Fox News. Sen. Blackburn Says Sports Betting Hearing Likely First of Several as Congress Weighs Federal Action
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The National Desk. Congress Increases Scrutiny Into Sports Betting, Prediction Markets
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NCAA. Sports Betting