More Than 17 NCAA Division-1 Basketball Teams Are Caught Up In A Point Shaving Scandal And At Least 20 People Have Been Charged, Including Former NBA Player Antonio Blakeney

It's just not worth it. It can't be. To do this nowadays, with as big of an industry sports gambling is, you have to know that the powers at be have SO MANY people who's sole job is to track and uncover gambling activity. It's too big of a business for them not to. There's too much money at stake to let shit like this fly. They're going to bring the hammer down on anyone they can.

You know point shaving is going to happen to some degree. It's been going on forever. Long before the wide-spread legalization of gambling. The Chicago White Sox threw the World Series in 1919. But even that was the fucking World Series. Look at some of these bets that people are being popped for today.

The audacity it takes to place a $424,000 first half bet on the Kent State Golden Flashes and think that's not going to raise the biggest and brightest of red flags. How many people just have a $275,000 hunch that South Alabama is going to come out firing vs Southern Miss? 

I'm probably being a bit naive. Again, sports gambling is a massive industry. People with money like to throw it around. A few hundred thousand dollars for some wealthy sports gamblers is probably akin to me betting $10 on some random over. But now that sports gambling has gone mainstream, and way more people are monitoring bets made across the world, to place those types of bets on games that only a few hundred people are even watching is just so monumentally stupid.

And from a players perspective, I'm sure a quick $10-30k of walking around money for a game you thought you were going to lose anyways sounds nice.

ABC News – The bribe payments ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 per game, a sum prosecutors said exceeded most players' legitimate opportunity to make money by marketing their name, image and likeness. The fixers also allegedly targeted players on teams that were underdogs in games and sought to have them fail to cover the spreads in those games.

But how are you going to put everything on the line for some career criminal who's pitch is, "Trust me bro. We know what we're doing." Like those guys aren't going to drop your name the second they find themselves in hot water.

This particular point-shaving scheme allegedly originated in China, before they eventually started dabbling in American college basketball.

After profiting on the fixed CBA games, Fairley, Hennen and Blakeney allegedly turned their attention to fixing NCAA men's basketball games. Blakeney is named but not charged. Federal prosecutors noted some of the defendants are "charged elsewhere."

They are accused of recruiting players who would help ensure their team failed to cover the spread of the first half of a game or an entire game, the indictment said. The fixers would then place wagers on those games through sportsbooks, betting against the team whose player or players they had bribed to engage in this point-shaving scheme, the indictment said.

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Two of the players named in the indictment, Cedquavious Hunter and Dequavion Short, both of New Orleans, were sanctioned in November by the NCAA for allegedly fixing games.

Two other defendants, Marves Fairley and Shane Hennen, allegedly recruited Blakeney, an All-American college player and a leading scorer in the CBA, offering bribe payments in exchange for Blakeney underperforming in games. Blakeney also allegedly recruited other players from his team to join the scheme. Fairley and Hennen are also charged in a separate illegal gambling case involving the NBA.

Those are the breaks. If you're gonna accept $30k cash to throw up some bricks vs Robert Morris, so some reckless idiot can place the most obviously sketchy bet in the world, you're gonna do some time for it.