Oh man.
College basketball players among those charged in point-shaving scheme by FBI - CBS Sports
https://www.cbssports.com/college-b...-point-shaving-fixing-games-fbi-scandal/Federal prosecutors charged 20 people, including several former college basketball players, in an alleged point-shaving scheme, according to an indictment obtained by CBS News. The indictment states that more than 39 college basketball players on at least 17 Division I teams "fixed and attempted to fix" over 29 games.
Seventeen former college basketball players are listed as defendants in the indictment. Fifteen of those players participated in the 2023-24 or 2024-25 seasons. A few have also played this season.
Four of the current players listed in the indictment are Kennesaw State's Simeon Cottle, the preseason Conference USA Player of the Year, Delaware State's Camian Shell, Eastern Michigan's Carlos Hart and Texas Southern's Oumar Koureissi.
Investigators identified Western Michigan, Butler, St. John's, Tulane, East Carolina, McNeese State, Nicholls State, Saint Louis, Duquesne, La Salle, Fordham, Buffalo, Kent State, Ohio, Georgetown and DePaul as the schools affected by the alleged scheme.
According to the indictment, the scheme began in September 2022 and eventually evolved to include college basketball players, who were paid anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 to intentionally compromise games for sports betting purposes.
"In placing these wagers on games they had fixed, the defendants defrauded sportsbooks, as well as individual sports bettors, who were all unaware that the defendants had corruptly manipulated the outcome of these games that should have been decided fairly, based on genuine competition and the best efforts of the players," the indictment said, according to ESPN.
Former New Orleans players Cedquavious Hunter and Dyquavian Short are among the defendants. Hunter and Short were both sanctioned by the NCAA in November after the Committee on Infractions found that they were involved in illegal gambling and/or game-manipulation activity.
"Protecting competition integrity is of the utmost importance for the NCAA," NCAA president Charlie Baker said in a statement regarding Thursday's indictments. "We are thankful for law enforcement agencies working to detect and combat integrity issues and match manipulation in college sports. The pattern of college basketball game integrity conduct revealed by law enforcement today is not entirely new information to the NCAA.
"Through helpful collaboration and with industry regulators, we have finished or have open investigations into almost all of the teams in today's indictment."
The NCAA's investigation also included former Arizona State star BJ Freeman, New Orleans' Jamond Vincent and Mississippi Valley State's Donovan Sanders and Alvin Stredic. The NCAA stated at the time that its six cases were unconnected.
