Sports betting is a dance between uncertainty and belief. The bettor reviews odds crafted by oddsmakers who have sifted through injuries, weather forecasts, and team statistics, and decides: moneyline, spread, parlay, or prop. However you may feel about gambling, most of the U.S. has decided to tolerate it to some degree. In the past several years, 38 states (and counting) have legalized sports betting.
But what happens when the machinery beneath the odds is manipulated — not by mere luck or shrewd analysis, but by hidden fountains of knowledge? Well, that wouldn’t just be gambling, legal or not. That would be cheating. When stakes are involved, the government does not like that at all. That’s why a bunch of NBA stars are now facing federal indictments. They were caught not just in the moral gray zone of betting but in allegations of outright fraud.
Less than a week after the poker indictment against NBA stars Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones for a rigged gambling ring, a new indictment arose. This one also involved Damon Jones. But this time, instead of Chauncey, his co-conspirator seems to be Terry Rozier of the Charlotte Hornets. This latest case broadens the scandal from smoky card tables to digital sportsbooks. Let’s dig into the allegations.
Cheating on “Unders”
We’ll start with a brief overview of how schemes like the alleged one at play here work. It’s a shadow version of the sportsbook’s intended contest that is very much illegal. The scheme centers on whether certain NBA players would score fewer points, receive fewer assists, or generally have lower game statistics than what the oddsmakers predicted. It’s a popular form of sports betting because it is simple and, on the surface, appears to provide decent odds.
That isn’t always the case. To illegally gain an advantage, insiders receive confidential information — such as a player planning to leave a game early — which makes it likely that the player will underperform compared to expectations. Then, bets would be placed that this player would not exceed those set numbers. These types of bets are called "unders," because the bettor is predicting the player’s performance will be under the line set by the sportsbook, rather than above it.
“Unders” become much more profitable if someone knows ahead of time that an important player is going to leave the game early or sit out. In any NBA game, a star player may have to sit out due to injury or to rest during a long season. For a strategic advantage, the team often waits until the last moment to announce it, even if the decision has been reached well in advance of tip-off. People with this secret information place these bets using friends or associates (instead of placing the bets themselves), which helps hide where the valuable information came from and protects the original source from being detected. Bets are placed before the news is public; winnings are distributed and sometimes laundered.
How the Scheme Paid Out
The allegations against Rozier, Jones, and other defendants follow this general scheme. Prosecutors say the whole thing began around December 2022 and continued through March 2024. The main idea was to use secret information about NBA games to make money by placing bets (sometimes with regular, legal betting apps and sometimes with underground bookies) before anyone else knew what was really going on.
According to prosecutors, NBA players, coaches, or people close to the teams who knew about player injuries or secret game plans would pass that info along to others for betting. The people who got the inside scoop would then place bets (or have other people place bets for them) on games where they knew the odds were in their favor, because the sportsbooks didn’t know what they knew. That gave them a significant advantage and allowed them to win money on bets that appeared normal to everyone else.
Eric Earnest (nicknamed “Spook”) isn’t an NBA player, but it’s his name that would go on to be in the title of the eventual criminal case because he acted as a middleman in the betting ring. He obtained secret information about NBA games from insiders and passed it along to others, allowing them to place profitable bets while he took a cut of the winnings.
Damon Jones, meanwhile, leveraged his connections as a former NBA player and coach to obtain confidential information about player injuries and game plans. He would share or sell this info to Earnest and others, so they could make money off bets before anything was public. Sometimes, Jones even learned about injuries from team trainers, which he passed to Earnest, who then spread it deeper into the network for betting.
Rozier’s Foul Play
Terry Rozier allegedly got caught up in all this back when he was playing for the Charlotte Hornets in the 2022-2023 season. Before a game in March 2023, Rozier told his friend Deniro Laster that he was planning to leave the game really early — supposedly because of an injury — even though the team and coaches didn’t know anything about it. Laster then sold this secret information to guys like Marves Fairley, who organized bets that Rozier would have lower stats than expected. Fairley also shared the info with Shane Hennen, who placed big bets himself and had a group of other people do the same, so they all made a lot of money off the outcome.
After the game, friends, relatives, and others in on the scheme placed big bets that Rozier wouldn’t have his usual stats. Since he really did leave the game early and didn’t meet those expectations, those bets all paid off with major winnings from the betting companies. The money from those bets was then funneled through cash payments, app transfers, and bank wires to keep it under the radar. To split up the money, Fairley went to Philadelphia to meet Hennen and collect winnings, then paid Laster tens of thousands in cash for the tip about Rozier. Laster later went to see Rozier himself, and the two of them counted the cash together from their score. That’s what the prosecutors are claiming, anyway.
Feds Step In
Those prosecutors soon brought charges in federal court in New York. The six defendants (Rozier, Jones, Fairley, Hennen, Laster, and Earnest) were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and related offenses. Prosecutors claim they used interstate wire communications to execute the fraudulent betting scheme and conducting financial transactions to disguise the proceeds. The charges carry penalties including prison sentences, financial penalties, and of course, giving up anything they bought or earned with the money from the scheme.
Related Resources:
- Massachusetts Lawsuit Predicts Kalshi Is Guilty of Illegally Taking Bets (FindLaw’s Courtside)
- NBA’s Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones Busted for High-Stakes Gambling Ring (FindLaw’s Legally Weird)
- NCAA Committee Wagers College Athletes Could Bet on Pro Games (FindLaw’s Legally Weird)
