The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has announced charges against 26 people involved in an alleged bribery and point-shaving scheme to fix NCAA Division I men’s basketball games and Chinese Basketball Association games.
The charges announced on Thursday follow a two-year investigation by the FBI into a point-shaving and sports-bribery conspiracy which targeted games in both the United States and China.
According to the indictment, the scheme was led by fixers Jalen Smith, Marves Fairley, Shane Hennen, Antonio Blakeney, Roderick Winkler, and Alberto Laureano.
Fairley and Hennen are two of the individuals named in the October 2025 NBA sports betting indictment in New York.
Yesterday’s indictment states that Fairley and Hennen began recruiting and bribing players in September 2022 to help influence or “fix” Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) men’s basketball games through point shaving.
Fairley and Hennen are said to have bribed CBA players to underperform and help ensure their team failed to cover the spread in certain games and then arranged for large wagers to be placed on those games against that team.
Defendant Blakeney, then a player on the CBA’s Jiangsu Dragons and one of the league’s leading scorers, agreed to participate in the scheme and then recruited other players from his team to join the scheme, working together with the fixers to influence the outcome of Jiangsu games.
The indictment alleges that the defendants then turned their attention to fixing NCAA men’s basketball games and recruited Smith, Winkler, and Laureano to help them operate this scheme and recruit NCAA players who would accept bribes to influence games.
The NCAA match fixing is said to have occurred during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 NCAA men’s basketball seasons, with players receiving bribes of $10,000 to $30,000 per game to participate in the scheme.
The indictment alleges that the fixers specifically targeted college players for whom the bribe payments would meaningfully supplement, or exceed, their legitimate opportunities for “Name-Image-Likeness” compensation.
At least 40 players from 18 different NCAA Division I men’s basketball teams were involved in fixing, or attempting to fix, more than 29 NCAA games.
“The criminal charges we have filed allege the criminal corruption of collegiate athletics through an international conspiracy of NCAA players, alumni, and professional bettors,” said U.S. Attorney David Metcalf. “It’s also yet another blow to public confidence in the integrity of sport, which rests on the fundamental principles of fairness, honesty, and respect for the rules of competition.
“When criminal acts threaten to corrupt such a central institution of American life, the Department of Justice won’t hesitate to step in.”
NCAA president Charlie Baker said: “Protecting competition integrity is of the utmost importance for the NCAA. 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.
“Our enforcement staff has opened sports betting integrity investigations into approximately 40 student-athletes from 20 schools over the past year,” Baker added. “While some of the investigations are ongoing, 11 student-athletes from seven schools were recently found to have bet on their own performances, shared information with known bettors, and/or engaged in game manipulation to collect on bets they – or others – placed. This behavior resulted in a permanent loss of NCAA eligibility for all of them.
“The Association has and will continue to aggressively pursue sports betting violations in college athletics using a layered integrity monitoring program that covers over 22,000 contests, but we still need the remaining states, regulators and gaming companies to eliminate threats to integrity – such as collegiate prop bets – to better protect athletes and leagues from integrity risks and predatory bettors.”