26 charged in latest US basketball scandal, scheme started in China, prosecutors say

One of the men behind a sweeping basketball match-fixing scheme told a co-conspirator the only certainties in life were “death, taxes and Chinese basketball”, US federal prosecutors revealed on Thursday.\nTwenty-six people have been charged with fixing US college and Chinese professional basketball games in an alleged transnational criminal conspiracy, federal prosecutors said.\nThe indictment, filed in Philadelphia, includes bribery charges and relates to nearly 30 games in which conspirators allegedly placed huge bets on the scores of contests after paying players to underperform.\nSome 15 players from 17 college teams were allegedly involved in the scheme from 2022 through 2025, as were two gamblers – Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley – who were indicted in October for their alleged role in an NBA sports betting scheme that included Miami Heat star Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups.\n“We allege an extensive international criminal conspiracy of … players, alumni and professional bettors who fixed games across the country and poisoned the American spirit of competition for monetary gain,” David Metcalf, a federal prosecutor, said. “This was a massive scheme. It enveloped the world of college basketball.”\n\nIt is the latest scandal to rock the world of US sports, after two sprawling federal investigations resulted in the arrest of an NBA coach and player in October.\nThe indictment unveiled on Thursday says an illegal sports gambling network originated in China in or about September 2022.\nFormer NBA Chicago Bulls player Antonio Blakeney – who is named but not charged in the latest indictment – is alleged to have been recruited by conspirators to influence the outcomes of games in the Chinese Basketball Association league, where he was playing for the Jiangsu Dragons.\nA package containing nearly $200,000 in cash was allegedly left in Blakeney’s storage unit in Florida at the end of the CBA 2022-23 season.\nThe alleged game fixing involving Blakeney began during the 2022-23 CBA season. Blakeney, who led the league with 32.1 points a game, is alleged to have been recruited by Hennen and Fairley to shave points.\n“Nothing guaranteed in this world but death, taxes and Chinese basketball,” Hennen texted a co-conspirator after a fixed CBA game.\nThe indictment describes Blakeney as being “charged elsewhere”.\nA year later, the gamblers began targeting college players from mid-level Division I programmes who weren’t making much money from name, image and likeness opportunities.\n“Because it proved profitable, they decided to take their operation Stateside to the world of NCAA Division I men’s basketball,” said Metcalf, referring to the hugely popular US college league.\nDefendants allegedly then offered more than 39 US college players bribes of up to US$30,000 per game and made wagers totalling millions of dollars.\nMore than a dozen of the defendants have played college basketball within the past three years.\nThe bribery charges carry a maximum sentence of five years and the fraud charges up to 20 years.\nSports wagering in most US states was illegal until 2018, but leagues have since rushed to get in on the multibillion-dollar bonanza of legalised betting.\nThe NBA last year said it is reviewing league policies to ensure players know gambling’s “dire risks”.\n