Sports

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An investigation into a sprawling gambling scheme to rig NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association 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 fixers recruiting players with the promise of a big payment in exchange for purposefully underperforming during a game, prosecutors said. The fixers would then place big bets against the players’ teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other bettors, authorities said.Calling it an “international criminal conspiracy,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf told reporters in Philadelphia that this case represents a “significant corruption of the integrity of sports.” The indictment suggests that many others — including unnamed players — had a role in the scheme but weren’t charged, and Metcalf said the investigation was continuing.The varying charges against the 26 defendants, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, include bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy.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.According to the indictment unsealed Thursday, fixers started with two games in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2023 and, successful there, moved on to rigging NCAA games as recently as January 2025.

The fixers’ scheme grew to involve more than 39 players on more than 17 different NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams, who then rigged and attempted to rig more than 29 games, prosecutors said.

They wagered millions of dollars, generating “substantial proceeds” 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.

Prosecutors named more than 40 schools that were involved in games that were targeted by the scheme, including a March 5, 2024 game involving Ohio University. No Bobcat players were involved in the scheme, according to the indictment.

Rigged games included those played by teams in major conferences, such as Big East and Atlantic 10, prosecutors said.

Some were games against nationally ranked programs while some were playoff games, including the first round of the Horizon League championship and the second round of the Southland Conference championship.

Some of the allegedly targeted teams were Tulane University, Buffalo State University, DePaul University, Robert Morris University, University of Southern Mississippi, Abilene Christian University, Eastern Michigan State University and the University of New Orleans.

Players often recruited teammates to cooperate by playing badly, sitting out or keeping the ball away from players who weren’t in on the scheme to prevent them from scoring. Sometimes the attempted fix failed, meaning the fixers lost their bets.

To entice players, fixers would text photos of stacks of cash. In one case, a fixer encouraged a player to recruit a St. Louis University teammate by texting him one such photo: “send that to him if he bite he bite if he don’t so be it lol,” the indictment said.

Four of the players charged — Simeon Cottle, Carlos Hart, Oumar Koureissi and Camian Shell — played for their current teams in the last few days, although the allegations against them do not involve this season, but the 2023-24 season.

Of the defendants, 15 played basketball for Division I NCAA schools during 2024-25 season, prosecutors say. Five others last played in the NCAA in the 2023-24 season while another, former NBA player Antonio Blakeney, played in the Chinese Basketball Association in the 2022-23 season.

The remaining five defendants were described as “fixers” who recruited players and placed bets. They include two men who prosecutors say worked in the training and development of basketball players. Another was a trainer and former coach, one was a former NCAA player and two were described as gamblers, influencers and sports handicappers.

One fixer reassured another by texting him there were no guarantees “in this world but death taxes and Chinese basketball,” court papers said.

At the end of the Chinese Basketball Association’s 2022-23 season, fixers put nearly $200,000 in bribe payments and shared winnings from rigged games into Blakeney’s storage locker in Florida, authorities said.

In many instances, the defendants’ wagers on the rigged games were successful. “The sportsbooks would not have paid out those wagers had they known that the defendants fixed those games,” the indictment said.

One betting scandal after another has rocked the sports world, where gambling revenue topped $11 billion for the first three-quarters of last year, according to the American Gaming Association. That’s up more than 13% from the prior year, the group said.

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 rescinding that decision in November.

The indictment follows a series of NCAA investigations that led to at least 10 players receiving lifetime bans this year for bets that sometimes involved their own teams and their own performances. And the NCAA has said that at least 30 players have been investigated over gambling allegations. More than 30 people were also charged in last year’s sprawling federal takedown of illegal gambling operations linked to professional basketball.

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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia contributed.