NCAA betting scandal

[Roy H.]

A sprawling betting 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.

Concerns about gambling and college sports have grown since 2018, when the US Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on the practice, leading some states to legalize it to varying degrees. 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.

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.

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.