U.S. Basketball Bribery and Point-Shaving Lawsuit

In January 2026, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia unsealed an indictment charging 26 people in what they called one of the largest basketball game-fixing conspiracies in American history, the case now widely known as the NCAA basketball point-shaving scandal of 2026. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleged fixers bribed players at more than 17 Division I men’s basketball programs and on a Chinese Basketball Association team to manipulate point spreads in at least 29 games between September 2022 and the 2024–25 college season.¹ The case, filed as United States v. Jalen Smith et al., has already produced its first guilty pleas.

Who Was Charged

The indictment, unsealed on January 15, 2026, charges 26 defendants with bribery in sporting contests under 18 U.S.C. § 224, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and aiding and abetting.¹ Prosecutors group the defendants into three camps: the gamblers and fixers who ran the betting operation, current and former college players who allegedly accepted bribes, and intermediaries who helped recruit them.

Six people are identified as organizers: Jalen Smith, 30, of Charlotte, North Carolina; Marves Fairley, 40, of Carson, Mississippi; Shane Hennen, 40, of Las Vegas and Philadelphia; Antonio Blakeney, 29, of Kissimmee, Florida; Roderick Winkler, 31, of Little Rock, Arkansas; and Alberto Laureano, 24, of the Bronx, New York.¹ The player-defendants are largely former Division I athletes, among them Kevin Cross (Tulane), Jalen Terry (DePaul), Da’Sean Nelson (DePaul and Eastern Michigan), Simeon Cottle (Kennesaw State), and Carlos Hart (Eastern Michigan).²

U.S. Attorney David Metcalf described the operation as “an extensive international criminal conspiracy of NCAA players, alumni and professional bettors.”³ The bribery counts carry up to five years in prison each. The wire fraud and conspiracy counts carry up to 20 years each.¹ All defendants are presumed innocent.

How the Alleged Scheme Worked

Prosecutors say the conspiracy began in China. In September 2022, Fairley and Hennen, described in the indictment as high-stakes sports gamblers, allegedly recruited Antonio Blakeney, then a star with the Chinese Basketball Association’s Jiangsu Dragons, to deliberately underperform so his team would miss the spread.⁴ Blakeney, a former LSU standout and Chicago Bulls player who averaged 32.7 points per game during the 2022–23 CBA season, allegedly pulled teammates into the arrangement.⁵

One CBA game illustrates the pattern. On March 6, 2023, the Jiangsu Dragons were 11.5-point underdogs against the Guangdong Southern Tigers. Fairley and Hennen allegedly wagered $198,300 through BetRivers Sportsbook on the favorites to cover. Blakeney scored 11 points, well below his season average. The Tigers won 127–96, easily covering.⁴ After the CBA regular season, Fairley allegedly deposited nearly $200,000 in cash in a Florida storage unit belonging to Blakeney.¹ In April 2023, Hennen allegedly wrote that there were no guarantees “in this world but death taxes and Chinese basketball.”⁶

The group then turned to college basketball. During the 2023–24 and 2024–25 seasons, the fixers recruited Division I players through social media, phone calls, and FaceTime sessions, sometimes showing stacks of cash on camera.⁷ They focused on mid-major and lower-tier programs and paid $10,000 to $30,000 per game.¹ Metcalf said the fixers deliberately targeted players who were “somewhat missing out on NIL money” — athletes for whom a five-figure cash payment far exceeded any legitimate Name, Image, and Likeness compensation.²

The mechanic was point shaving, not throwing games. A team could win and the fix still pay out, as long as the final margin fell short of the spread. Prosecutors say the ring often bet first-half spreads on lower-profile games, which draw less attention but still move real money. Fixers tried to recruit multiple players on the same team when possible, and cash payments were typically hand-delivered on campus after the games.⁷

The Games and the Betting Volumes

The indictment references teams including Abilene Christian, Butler, DePaul, Duquesne, East Carolina, Florida Atlantic, Fordham, Georgetown, Kennesaw State, Kent State, La Salle, McNeese State, Nicholls State, Ohio, St. Louis, St. John’s, SUNY Buffalo, Tulane, and Western Michigan. Several schools said they appeared only because their opponents’ players were implicated and that none of their own athletes were involved.³

Two games are laid out in unusual detail:

DePaul vs. Georgetown, February 24, 2024. Prosecutors allege DePaul guard Jalen Terry, teammate Da’Sean Nelson, and former DePaul player Micawber Etienne agreed to underperform in the first half so DePaul would not cover a first-half spread of roughly 2.5 points. Georgetown led 41–28 at the break. Terry played 10 first-half minutes, attempted zero shots, and recorded two fouls and three turnovers. He scored 16 points in the second half. After the game, Jalen Smith allegedly texted, “I love Jalen terry he perfected his job,” then traveled to Chicago the next day to deliver $40,000 in cash to Terry and Nelson.⁸⁹
Tulane vs. East Carolina, February 18, 2024. Tulane forward Kevin Cross, an all-conference selection, was allegedly promised $30,000 to make sure Tulane did not cover a spread of 2.5 to 3.5 points. He scored four points, compared with a 17.5-point season average, in 32 minutes on 0-for-2 shooting with four turnovers. East Carolina won 81–67. The ring placed $140,000 in bets on Tulane to lose by more than 2.5. Two weeks later, when the ring tried Cross again against Florida Atlantic, the fix failed. He scored 14, and the gamblers lost roughly $200,000.¹⁰¹¹¹²

The wagering was massive for the level of games involved. Investigators identified $458,000 bet on a North Carolina A&T vs. Towson game, $424,000 on Kent State covering a first-half spread against Buffalo, $275,000 on a Southern Miss game, and $256,000 on a Robert Morris contest.¹³ Sums like that on obscure mid-major games are the kind of anomaly integrity monitors are built to catch.

How the Scheme Was Detected

The FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office led the investigation, with help from the FBI’s New York Field Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Louis D. Lappen and Jerome M. Maiatico are prosecuting.¹

Detection came in significant part through integrity monitors that now serve sportsbooks, state regulators, and NCAA conferences. Integrity Compliance 360 distributed alerts flagging suspicious wagering on several of the games, and the International Betting Integrity Association reviewed flagged contests. Some signals were glaring. In at least one game, a veteran bookmaker told ESPN, the first-half spread closed at a number equal to or higher than the full-game spread, a pattern he described as an unmistakable warning sign. Monitors also connected high-stakes bets placed from accounts in Connecticut and Tennessee on the same game and linked current-season wagering to flagged bets from prior seasons.¹⁴ CBS Sports reported that the NCAA had known about the FBI’s investigation for more than a year before the indictment was unsealed and had been running its own parallel enforcement.¹³

Where the Criminal Case Stands

The case is docketed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania as 2:26-cr-00023.¹⁵ No trials have taken place.

The first named-defendant guilty plea came on March 9, 2026. Jalen Smith, the Charlotte fixer accused of coordinating player recruitment and cash deliveries, pleaded guilty in federal court in Philadelphia to wire fraud, bribery in sporting contests, and a separate weapons charge.¹⁶ Prosecutors described one incident in which Smith traveled to Louisiana to deliver about $32,000 in cash to two of the charged players.¹⁷ Former DePaul player Micawber Etienne entered a plea agreement in December 2025, before the indictment was publicly unsealed.⁸ ESPN also reported that an unnamed former University of New Orleans player had previously admitted his role.

Antonio Blakeney faces wire fraud charges carrying up to 20 years. He signed a contract extension with Israeli club Hapoel Tel Aviv in April 2025 that runs through the 2026–27 season.⁵ Fairley and Hennen also face a separate federal gambling case involving the NBA; in that matter, Hennen and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were charged in connection with an insider-information betting scheme.¹⁸

Parallel NCAA Discipline

Before the federal indictment was public, the NCAA was already moving. In September 2025, the NCAA announced it was investigating 13 players from six schools — the University of New Orleans, Arizona State, Temple, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina A&T, and Eastern Michigan — for sports-betting violations.¹⁹ Three Fresno State and San Jose State players were banned that same month for betting on their own games.²⁰

In November 2025, the NCAA declared six Division I men’s basketball players permanently ineligible. Three were from the University of New Orleans — Cedquavious “Dae Dae” Hunter, Dyquavian Short, and Jamond Vincent — whom investigators found had attempted to fix at least seven games during the prior season. Investigators recovered text messages from Short’s phone discussing receipt of $5,000 and phone records showing FaceTime calls with a known bettor.¹⁹ Hunter later admitted on national television that he had lied to NCAA investigators before confessing.²¹ In late October 2025, three former Eastern Michigan players, including Da’Sean Nelson and Jalen Terry, were declared permanently ineligible for refusing to cooperate.

By January 2026, the NCAA had declared 11 athletes from seven schools permanently ineligible and had identified 13 more from eight schools who had refused to cooperate and were no longer competing. Enforcement staff had opened sports-betting investigations into roughly 40 athletes at 20 schools.²⁰

The Federal Statute Behind the Charges

The lead charge, bribery in sporting contests, is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 224. Congress enacted the statute in 1964, making it a federal crime to carry out, attempt, or conspire to carry out any scheme using interstate or foreign commerce to influence a sporting contest through bribery. It applies to contests between individuals or teams regardless of whether the participants are amateur or professional, and it covers any event publicly announced before it occurs. The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a fine.²² The statute does not preempt state laws; states can still prosecute the same conduct under their own bribery and fraud statutes.

The heavier exposure in this case comes from the wire fraud counts, which carry up to 20 years each and reflect the alleged use of interstate communications and online betting platforms to run the scheme.¹

1
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