The College Basketball Players and Teams Implicated in Federal Game-Fixing Indictments

The college basketball world was rocked Thursday after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania unveiled indictments of 20 people alleged to have hatched a game-fixing scheme that impacted at least 39 players, 29 games and 17 Division I men’s basketball teams during the 2023–24 and ’24–25 seasons. The indictment also lays out alleged match-fixing in the Chinese Basketball Association.

The indictment paints a detailed picture of how a pair of high-stakes gamblers, Marves Fairley and Shane Hennen (already implicated in the NBA’s gambling scandal), worked with trainers, an AAU coach and a pair of former D-I players to recruit current players to fix game outcomes, both first-half and full-game spreads. Players were incentivized with bribes that the indictment states ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 per game, results that gamblers often bet well north of $100,000 on.

For the most part, the scandal steered clear of the sport’s biggest, most successful programs. Instead, the gamblers largely recruited players from mid- and low-major schools, who are often making very little to no money via NIL.

“Certain players were targeted because they were somewhat missing out on NIL money,” U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said in a news conference Thursday morning. “They were being targeted so they could supplement their NIL money.”

Most of the impacted games in the indictment came in February and March of the 2023–24 season, largely involving teams mired in miserable losing seasons. Of the 17 teams with games impacted based on the indictment, just two finished with winning records: Nicholls State in ’23–24 and Alabama State in ’24–25.

Here’s a look inside the programs, the players involved and more:

DePaul

The lone high-major team involved in the indictment is DePaul, with allegations that players attempted to fix at least three games late in the 2023–24 season. By then, DePaul was already experiencing one of the worst seasons by a high-major team in recent college basketball history. The Blue Demons finished that season 3–29, did not win a single Big East game and parted with head coach Tony Stubblefield in late January. Sources at the time indicated to Sports Illustrated that DePaul had by far the least amount of NIL money to spend on its roster in the league, with one source ballparking that the team had paid out approximately only $500,000 to its entire roster.

That context helps explain how three Blue Demon players (Da’Sean Nelson, Jalen Terry and Micawber “Mac” Etienne) were allegedly convinced to join the scheme. In the first game in the indictment (a matchup with lowly Georgetown), the gamblers allegedly bet on Georgetown to cover the first-half spread. Terry, the team’s point guard, was scoreless in the first half, and Georgetown covered easily. Terry then scored 16 points in the second half to help DePaul nearly come back and win the game. To illustrate how invested the players were in the scheme, in a different game against St. John’s, the indictment alleges that Etienne was texting with the gamblers midgame about plans to keep the ball away from a player not involved in the scheme who was playing well.

All three players transferred at the end of the season: Terry and Nelson transferred together to Eastern Michigan, while Etienne transferred to La Salle. Terry and Nelson allegedly continued to work with Jalen Smith and others in the indictment to tank first halves of games at Eastern Michigan in 2024–25, with the indictment laying out very poor first-half showings against Oakland (November 2024) and Wright State (December 2024) before EMU rallied to win both games in the second half. La Salle was mentioned in the indictment, but only in the ’23–24 season while Etienne was still at DePaul.

Southland Conference (Nicholls State, New Orleans, Northwestern State)

One hotspot based on the indictment was the Southland Conference, a league of mostly lower-budget programs based in Texas and Louisiana. In the 2023–24 season, the league was ranked 28th out of 32 in efficiency per KenPom, with six of the 10 teams ranking outside the top 300 teams nationally. Players at this level, particularly dating back to ’23–24, often don’t receive any money for playing at the school beyond a scholarship and small stipends for cost of attendance.

The best team of that bunch allegedly involved was Nicholls State, which won 20 games that season. However, the game players Diante Smith and Oumar Koureissi are alleged to have thrown was against the league’s best team, McNeese State, which had talent and a roster budget that trounced anyone in the conference at the time that season.

New Orleans, another struggling low-budget Southland program, was implicated in both the 2023–24 and ’24–25 seasons. In ’23–24, Carlos Hart, a part-time starter who averaged 6.7 points per game, is alleged to have been involved. In ’24–25, Cedquavious “Dae Dae” Hunter and Dyquavion “Jah” Short are named in the indictment. A third player, Jamond Vincent, was banned for life by the NCAA in November. In a November interview with Good Morning America, Hunter said he was “money hungry” and saw an opportunity for “fast cash” before becoming emotional and discussing his financial needs because he had just had a child.

“The school wasn’t paying me money, so I was trying to get money to take care of my child,” Hunter said in the interview.

Also involved during the ’23–24 season was Northwestern State, which had a miserable 9–23 season. No players were named, and the indictment says Northwestern State won the game in question, losing the bettors money.

Atlantic 10 Conference (Saint Louis, Fordham, La Salle)

The gamblers also targeted three teams at the bottom of the Atlantic 10 late in the 2023–24 season: Saint Louis, Fordham and La Salle. Fordham and La Salle each finished 6–12 in conference play, while Saint Louis finished 5–13. Indictments were secured for Bradley Ezewiro, who played for Saint Louis, and Elijah Gray, who played at Fordham. Gray went on to suit up at Temple in ’24–25, which had its own issues with gambling in the ’23–24 season, including point guard Hysier Miller betting against the Owls in parlays.

Other notable players and teams involved

Kennesaw State Owls guard Simeon Cottle (2) dribbles the ball — Kennesaw State guard Simmeon Cottle, who played for the Owls on Wednesday night, has been with the team for four seasons. | John David Mercer-Imagn Images

The most high-profile active college basketball player mentioned in the indictment is Simeon Cottle, a star guard at Kennesaw State. Cottle is a three-year starter for the Owls who is averaging over 20 points per game this season and scored 21 points in a win over FIU just hours before the indictment was made public. Cottle is accused of helping tank a first half against Queens late in the 2023–24 season. At the time, Kennesaw was struggling mightily, having lost eight out of 10 to spoil a 4–1 start in league play. Cottle allegedly attempted to recruit players to join the scheme the next year but failed to do so, and the team went on to have a much improved 19-win season despite moving up in conference from the Atlantic Sun to Conference USA.

Carlos Hart (now at Eastern Michigan), Oumar Koureissi (now at Texas Southern) and Camian Shell (previously North Carolina A&T, now Delaware State) are the three others named who are active college players.

Perhaps the best player implicated directly in the indictment is Kevin Cross, who scored nearly 1,750 career points at Tulane and Nebraska. He averaged 17.5 points, 7.3 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game for the Green Wave in 2023–24 and had fringe NBA aspirations, signing a Summer League contract with the Charlotte Hornets following the season and spending the ’24–25 season in the NBA G League. But in one of the final games of his college career against East Carolina, Cross mysteriously was held without a field goal and attempted just two shots. In the previous 12 league games, Cross had attempted almost 14 shots per game. Afterward, Cross was allegedly delivered approximately $30,000. Even for a star like Cross, that was a big sum of money; the type of six-figure NIL deals that are much more common now at levels like the American Conference were extremely rare in the ’23–24 season.

At Abilene Christian, key starter Airion Simmons is alleged to have attempted to manipulate the team’s CIT postseason tournament games in 2024. While he was initially unsuccessful (Abilene won its first game against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi by 10), he scored zero points (despite averaging 12.1 per game) in a blowout loss to Tarleton State. Notably, these were Simmons’s final games of his college career given he was out of eligibility following the ’23–24 season. The CIT is a now-defunct postseason tournament for teams that don’t qualify for the NIT or NCAA tournaments.

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