January 17, 2026
‘Protecting competition integrity is of the utmost importance for the NCAA,’NCAA President Charlie Baker said.
Twenty-six men have been charged in an alleged conspiracy to manipulate NCAA college basketball games.
According to The Athletic, the alleged scheme started in 2022 and involved 39 college basketball players who played on more than 17 teams in more than 29 Division I games. The charges were announced by federal prosecutors, who stated that the charges for the men were for their alleged roles in a plan to bribe and manipulate college games involving athletes who were active at the time of the schemes.
“Protecting competition integrity is of the utmost importance for the NCAA,” said NCAA President Charlie Baker in a statement on Thursday. “We are thankful for law enforcement agencies working to detect and combat integrity issues and match manipulation in college sports.”
Some of the suspects named were Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley, who were indicted in a federal district court in New York in October. Former LSU and NBA player Antonio Blakeney and several current college players, Kennesaw State’s Simeon Cottle, Eastern Michigan’s Carlos Hart, Delaware State’s Camian Shell, and Texas Southern’s Oumar Koureissi have also been named.
Several athletes played with DePaul, Nicholls State, Tulane, La Salle, Fordham, Northwestern State, Saint Louis, Buffalo, Robert Morris, Southern Miss, North Carolina A&T, Coppin State, University of New Orleans, Abilene Christian, Alabama State, and Kennesaw State.
Hennen and Fairley supposedly worked with Blakeney and others to manipulate college basketball games during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons, according to an indictment by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Prosecutors claim that players were recruited with bribes and asked to help fix games so their teams would not cover the spread. Players were offered between $10,000 and $30,000 per game to be part of their gambling ring.
The scheme began in 2022, when Fairley and Hennen recruited Blakeney, a player for the Jiangsu Dragons in the Chinese Basketball Association, to fix games in that league. After making substantial money at the end of the season, $200,000, the scheme then moved to Division I college basketball games the next season.
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