A former Fordham University player is among the 39 college basketball players on 17 NCAA Division I teams that are caught up in a point-shaving scheme federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced Thursday.
The 70-page indictment charged 20 people with conspiring to fix at least 29 games, and includes bribery in sporting contests, wire fraud and conspiracy.
Between September 2022 and February 2025, a group of fixers allegedly recruited and bribed basketball players to influence the outcomes of games at first in the Chinese Basketball Association and later the NCAA. The scheme relied on point shaving, where players intentionally underperform by scoring fewer points or playing second-rate defense to ensure their team did not “cover the spread” set by sportsbooks. This allowed the fixers to place large wagers against those teams.
“In placing these wagers on games they had fixed, the defendants defrauded sportsbooks, as well as individual sports bettors, who were all unaware that the defendants had corruptly manipulated the outcome of these games that should have been decided fairly, based on genuine competition and the best efforts of the players,” the indictment reads.
During the 2023-24 and 2024-25 NCAA men’s basketball seasons, the fixers recruited NCAA players who allegedly accepted bribe payments in exchange for their help. According to the indictment, Elijah Gray, a former Fordham forward, allegedly accepted an offer of $10,000 to-$15,000 from trainer and scout Jalen Smith to help fix a game against Duquesne University on Feb. 23, 2024.
The indictment alleges that Gray and another player he helped recruit in the scheme would only receive payments if the scheme succeeded. Both players performed below their season averages but Fordham still won the game 79-67, meaning the fixers lost their bet.
Shawn Fulcher, a State University of New York at Buffalo guard, is a defendant in the case, who along with his teammate Isaiah Adams is named as participating with one other player in the scheme. The players were allegedly bribed to fix several games, and allegedly received a payment of $54,000 delivered to campus.
NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement that the league was working with the federal prosecutors to investigate student athletes for sports betting allegations.
“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,” Baker wrote.
The fixers made wagers totaling millions of dollars paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to student-athletes. The indictment includes a notice of forfeiture, indicating the feds plan to seize all property and proceeds derived from these illegal activities.
