A multi-million dollar fraud has put the integrity of basketball in the United States, uncovering a network of corruption that directly affects the heart of its university sport. The federal authorities of the North American country have dismantled a complex match-fixing scheme whose ultimate goal was to manipulate sports betting, generating a scandal of enormous proportions that has tarnished the reputation of the popular NCAA college competition. The investigation reveals that the volume of illicit business moved by the organization was extraordinarily high, which shows the magnitude of the criminal operation.
In fact, the reach of the network was such that its tentacles came to influence, or at least attempted to, the outcome of more than twenty-nine matches fixed of the university Division I, the highest category of this sport in the country. The network managed to involve more than thirty-nine players from various institutions, a figure that illustrates the ease with which the corruptors moved in a theoretically protected environment.
To date, the prosecution has filed formal charges against a total of twenty peoplea heterogeneous group that made up the hard core of the organization. The accusation names sixteen former university players, two coaches and two professional bettors as those mainly responsible for the conspiracy to alter sports results and thereby obtain illicit benefits.
A plot originating in China
Curiously, although the main focus of the fraudulent network was on American college basketball, the origin of its activities dates back to September 2022 abroad. The first investigations place the germ of the plot in bribes to players in Chinaspecifically to athletes who competed in the Asian giant’s professional league, demonstrating the international nature of the organization.
However, those responsible for the network soon expanded their operations to the United States, where they found much more fertile ground for their interests. The plot spread with astonishing speed, corrupting players of more than seventeen university teams different. This ability to infiltrate so many squads has generated a deep commotion in the North American sports scene.
