Two individuals involved with the NBA betting and gambling scandals that led to Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups being arrested are linked to more game fixing in college and China’s top basketball league.
Before this year’s NBA season kicked off, the league found itself embroiled in a pair of ugly scandals. The first, which was already partially known to fans of the sport, involved allegations of game fixing and saw Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier picked up by federal officials because of his alleged involvement.
The second claimed that then-Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was involved in a poker scheme that bilked victims out of huge sums of money using a sophisticated high-tech system. Well, two of the men indicted in those cases, Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley, reportedly had their illegal tentacles in DI college basketball and the Chinese Basketball Association.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors revealed a new round of charges against the pair that claimed they persuaded 39 college basketball players on more than 17 teams to shave points in over 29 DI games during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons. Four of the players charged are currently active. They are Kennesaw State’s Simeon Cottle, Eastern Michigan’s Carlos Hart, Delaware State’s Camian Shell, and Texas Southern’s Oumar Koureissi.
The schools involved in the investigation include DePaul, Nicholls State, Tulane, La Salle, Fordham, Northwestern State, Saint Louis, Buffalo, Robert Morris, Southern Miss, North Carolina A&T, Coppin State, University of New Orleans, Abilene Christian, Alabama State, and Kennesaw State.
The charges claim Hennen and Fairly convinced players to fix games so their teams would not cover the spread. The spread is the number of points a sportsbook predicts a team would lose by. In return, the athletes were paid between $10,000 to $30,000 a game.
Chinese Basketball Association Also Linked to NBA Gambling Scandal
This particular points shaving scheme began in 2022. However, according to the charges, it did not start in the college rankings. The indicted duo apparently began developing their system in China when they recruited former LSU and Chicago Bulls player Antonio Blakeney while he was suiting up for the Jiangsu Dragons in the CBA.
Blakeney was a leading scorer for the Dragons that season, averaging 32 points a game. In one instance, Jiangsu was an 11.5-point underdog in a March 2023 game. Blakeney scored just 11 points and his team lost by 31 points. Fairley and Hennen scored a win on a $198,300 bet at a Pennsylvania casino for that game.
The scheme involved other players and grew so profitable that Hennen stated in a text to another person involved that “Nothing gu[a]rantee[d] in this world but death[,] taxes[,] and Chinese basketball.” They reportedly paid Blakeney $200,000 at the end of the season for his part in the points shaving plot.
Both Fariley and Hennen have pleaded not guilty to the charges that emerged in October.
