Dozens charged in NCAA game-rigging case

The alleged fraud was part of a ‘transactional criminal scheme’

(Image credit: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)

What happened

Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging 26 people with bribery and wire fraud as part of what they called a sprawling “transactional criminal scheme” to fix both NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games. The charges, filed in Philadelphia, are the “latest development in a widening scandal stretching across collegiate and professional basketball,” The Washington Post said.

Who said what

The “point-shaving scheme” involved more than 39 players on 17 NCAA Division I teams who are accused of rigging “dozens of games in the previous two seasons,” ESPN said. The 26 defendants include “more than a dozen” NCAA basketball players who allegedly “tried to fix games as recently as last season,” The Associated Press said. The scheme’s fixers paid the players $10,000 to $30,000 in cash for each rigged game, prosecutors said.

This was an “extensive international criminal conspiracy” of “NCAA players, alumni and professional bettors,” said U.S. Attorney David Metcalf. The alleged perpetrators, including former NBA player Antonio Blakeney, “poisoned the American spirit of competition for monetary gain.” NCAA President Charlie Baker thanked law enforcement agencies for “working to detect and combat integrity issues and match manipulation in college sports.”

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What next?

Yesterday’s indictment is the “latest gambling scandal to hit the sports world since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision unleashed a meteoric rise in legal sports betting,” the AP said. It follows a federal “crackdown” on “illicit sports gambling and point-shaving schemes” that “engulfed” the NBA in October, said Fox News.

Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.