Philadelphia
P.A.
—
A massive betting scheme aimed at fixing NCAA and Chinese Basketball Federation games ensnared 26 people, including more than a dozen college basketball players who tried to fix games as recently as last season, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The scheme generally revolved around match-fixers recruiting players with the promise of a large payout in exchange for deliberately underperforming during a match, prosecutors said. The matchmakers would then place large bets against the players’ teams during these matches, thereby defrauding sportsbooks and other bettors, authorities said.
Concerns about gambling and college sports have grown since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on the practice, leading some states to legalize it to varying degrees. The NCAA does not allow athletes or staff to bet on college games, but it briefly allowed student-athletes to bet on professional sports last year before reversing that decision in November.
According to the indictment unsealed Thursday, the fixers started with two games in the Chinese Basketball Federation in 2023 and, after being successful there, moved on to fixing NCAA games as late as January 2025.
The fixing scheme grew to involve more than 39 players from more than 17 different NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams, who then fixed and attempted to fix more than 29 games, prosecutors said. They bet millions of dollars, generating “substantial revenue” for themselves, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to players in bribes, prosecutors said, with payments to players typically ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game.
Four of the players charged – Simeon Cottle, Carlos Hart, Oumar Koureissi and Camian Shell – have played for their current teams in recent days, although the allegations against them do not relate to this season.
Calling it an “international criminal conspiracy,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf told reporters in Philadelphia that the case represents a “significant corruption of the integrity of sport.” The indictment suggests many other people — including anonymous players — played roles in the scheme but have not been charged, and Metcalf said the investigation continues.
Among the defendants, 15 played basketball at NCAA Division I schools during the 2024-2025 season, according to prosecutors. Five others last played in the NCAA in the 2023-2024 season while another, former NBA player Antonio Blakeney, played in the Chinese Basketball Association in the 2022-2023 season.
The remaining five defendants were described as “fixers” who recruited gamblers and placed bets. Among them are two men who prosecutors say worked in the training and development of basketball players. Another was a coach and former coach, one was a former NCAA player and two were described as players, influencers and sports handicappers.
One repairman, reassuring another repairman, texted him that there were no guarantees “in this world besides death taxes and Chinese basketball,” according to court documents.
At the end of the 2022-23 Chinese Basketball Federation season, match-fixers paid nearly $200,000 in bribes and shared winnings from fixed games in Blakeney’s storage locker in Florida, authorities said.
The players also helped fix the matches by recruiting other players, authorities said. In many cases, defendants’ bets on rigged games were successful. “The sportsbooks would not have paid these bets if they had known that the defendants had fixed these games,” the indictment states.
The charges, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, include bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy.
Betting scandals continue to rock the sports world, where gambling revenues topped $11 billion in the first three quarters of last year, according to the American Gaming Association. This represents an increase of more than 13% compared to the previous year, the group said.
The indictment follows a series of NCAA investigations that led to the lifetime bans of at least 10 players this year for betting, sometimes involving their own teams and performances. And the NCAA said at least 30 players were investigated following allegations of gambling. More than 30 people were also indicted last year as part of the sweeping federal takedown of illegal gambling operations linked to professional basketball.
