PHILADELPHIA (AP/Atlanta News First) -- A sprawling betting scheme to rig NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games ensnared 26 people, including Kennesaw State University guard Simeon Cottle and more than a dozen college basketball players who tried to fix games as recently as last season, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
According to documents obtained by Atlanta News First, former Kennesaw State forward Demond Robinson was also named as part of the scheme. Robinson played three seasons for the Owls (2021-24), averaging 10.9 points and six rebounds during his time at Kennesaw State.
The documents state Cottle and Robinson were involved in the scheme on four instances.
In late February 2024, Cottle, Robinson, and one other player agreed to underperform in games in exchange for bribes, with North Carolina basketball trainer Jalen Smith initially contacting Cottle via FaceTime and Cottle helping recruit teammates, according to court documents.
Before the March 1, 2024, game against Queens, Smith and Cottle coordinated the scheme through texts and FaceTime calls, with Smith guaranteeing $100,000 in cash, the documents state.
The fixers placed over $20,000 in bets across multiple sportsbooks on Queens to cover the first half spread. Court documents state during the game, the recruited players deliberately underperformed in the first half, allowing Queens to lead 52-39 and cover the spread, while the fixers won their bets. The players then played normally in the second half, and Kennesaw State won the game 91-82.
Between March 2-4, Smith arranged delivery of about $40,000 in cash to Cottle on campus to be shared among the players, according to court documents.
In November 2024, Smith and Cottle discussed reviving the scheme for the new season and attempted to recruit additional players with a $200,000 offer, but the effort failed, the court documents state.
The scheme generally revolved around fixers recruiting players with the promise of a big payment in exchange for those players purposefully underperforming during a game, prosecutors said. Then the fixers placed big bets against those players' teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other bettors, according to the indictment unsealed Thursday.
Fixers started with two games in the Chinese Basketball Association in 2023 and, successful there, moved on to fixing NCAA games as recently as January 2025, authorities say. The "bribe payments" to players ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 per game, authorities said.
Four of the players charged -- Cottle, Carlos Hart, Oumar Koureissi and Camian Shell -- played for their current teams in the last few days, although the allegations against them do not involve this season.
Cottle, a senior from College Park, scored 21 points Wednesday night in the team's 89-86 win over FIU. He's averaged 20.2 points in 17 games for the Owls this season.
Calling it an "international criminal conspiracy," U.S. Attorney David Metcalf told reporters in Philadelphia that this case represents a "significant corruption of the integrity of sports."
Concerns about gambling and college sports have grown since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on the practice, leading some states to legalize it to varying degrees. The NCAA does not allow athletes or staff to bet on college games, but it briefly allowed student-athletes to bet on professional sports last year before rescinding that decision in November.
Of the defendants, 15 played basketball for Division 1 NCAA schools during 2024-25 season, prosecutors say. Several of them are playing this season.
Five others last played in the NCAA in the 2023-24 season while another, former NBA player Antonio Blakeney, played in the Chinese Basketball Association in the 2022-23 season.
The other five defendants were described by authorities as fixers.
They include two men who prosecutors say worked in the training and development of basketball players. Another was a trainer and former coach; one was a former NCAA player; and two were described as gamblers, influencers and sports handicappers.
In many instances, the defendants' wagers on the fixed games were successful. The sportsbooks paid out the winnings and took losses, authorities say.
"The sportsbooks would not have paid out those wagers had they known that the defendants fixed those games,"
Meanwhile, other bettors unaware of the scheme lost money on their bets and would not have placed those bets had they known about it, authorities say.
The charges, filed in federal court in Philadelphia, include bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy.
One betting scandal after another has rocked the sports world, where gambling revenue topped $11 billion for the first three-quarters of last year, according to the American Gaming Association. That's up more than 13% from the prior year, the group said.
The indictment follows a series of NCAA investigations that led to at least 10 players receiving lifetime bans this year for bets that sometimes involved their own teams and their own performances. And the NCAA has said that at least 30 players have been investigated over gambling allegations. More than 30 people were also charged in last year's sprawling federal takedown of illegal gambling operations linked to professional basketball.