Jared Diamond and Louise Radnofsky:
Taken together, the charges in Thursday’s indictment offered the latest reminder of how pervasive game-rigging has become in the era of legal sports gambling in America: No level of basketball is safe.
“This,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said, “was a massive scheme that enveloped the world of college basketball.”
At the center of the indictment are a pair of gamblers named Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania say the pair placed five- and six-figure bets on contests that were fixed. A lawyer for Fairley declined to comment on Thursday. Hennen’s lawyer, Todd Leventhal, said Friday that Hennen’s betting losses were far bigger than his winnings.
“He’s got to be the worst inside gambler ever,” Leventhal said.
Hennen and Fairley are two of the same men who are facing charges in New York for allegedly conspiring with athletes to manipulate their performance and using inside information in half-a-dozen NBA games in 2023 and 2024.
But before the scheme arrived at gyms on the campuses of Coppin State and Abilene Christian, it originated on the other side of the world—in the coastal province of Jiangsu, China.