Gambler faces up to 125 years in basketball betting scheme

"Sugar" Shane Hennen pleaded guilty to fixing collegiate basketball games and using insider knowledge from NBA players — including Jontay Porter and Terry Rozier — to place bets.PHILADELPHIA (CN) — Former professional gambler “Sugar” Shane Hennen has pleaded guilty to orchestrating two of the most high-profile betting schemes this century, resulting in millions of dollars in illegal bets placed across multiple professional and collegiate leagues.Hennen pleaded guilty to sports bribery, wire fraud, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy to commit both wire fraud and money laundering across two separate cases.Hennen’s maximum sentence is 125 years’ imprisonment and $1.75 million in fines, according to the Justice Department. His sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 25, 2027.A legal representative for Hennen declined to comment before sentencing. He has an extensive list of priors that include rigging poker games, stabbing a former college basketball player and dealing cocaine.In one of two cases, federal prosecutors accuse Hennen and gambler Marves “Vez” Fairley of “fixing” Chinese and collegiate basketball games between 2022 and 2025.“[Hennen] engaged in the scheme as a ‘fixer,’ working together with others who recruited and bribed CBA and NCAA men’s basketball players to underperform and help ensure their team failed to cover the spread,” federal prosecutors wrote in the plea memorandum. ”[Hennen] then placed large wagers on those games, and arranged for others to do so, generating proceeds for the scheme.”According to prosecutors, Hennen and Fairley first approached former NBA player Antonio Blakeney — then a shooting guard for the Jiangsu Dragons — instructing him and his teammates to intentionally underperform in games so the fixers could bet against the Dragons, an illegal practice known as point shaving.In one incident, prosecutors said, Hennen texted a co-conspirator to reassure them of their bets: “Nothing gu[a]rantee[d] in this world but death taxes and Chinese basketball.”Blakeney and his teammates would then receive bribes from Hennen and Fairley in exchange for their poor performances, prosecutors said, including $200,000 in cash left by Fairley in a Florida storage unit held by Blakeney.After the 2022-23 Chinese Basketball Association season, Hennen and Fairley shifted their focus to the NCAA, bribing 39 players across more than 17 Division I collegiate men’s basketball teams to underperform over the course of the league’s 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons.In the second scheme, federal prosecutors accuse Hennen and Fairley of using information not available to the public to place bets on NBA games.As part of this scheme, prosecutors claim, the fixers obtained information from several high-profile NBA players and coaches, including Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups.In one instance, then-Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter personally messaged a Hennen associate that he intended to leave an upcoming Raptors game early by feigning a lingering eye injury, prosecutors said.With this knowledge, Hennen’s associate placed a bet anticipating Porter’s underperformance that would net Hennen more than $103,000. Porter is now banned from the NBA for life.“Hennen and his co-conspirators knowingly and intentionally conspired to devise this scheme to defraud the betting companies; to obtain money and property from them by means of one or more materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations and promises; and for the purpose of executing the scheme, to transmit and cause to be transmitted wire communications in interstate and foreign commerce,” federal prosecutors wrote in the plea memorandum.Fairley pleaded guilty in May to seven counts spanning both cases, including bribery, wire fraud and money laundering. His sentencing is also set for February 2027.Hennen and Fairley still face charges in a third case involving purportedly rigged poker games in connection with the Mafia. Billups and former NBA coach Damon Jones were also indicted in the poker case; Jones pleaded guilty to one of two counts in April.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads