Two current HBCU basketball players are in hot water with the federal government as gambling-related charges were announced Thursday morning.
Camian Shell of Delaware State and Texas Southern’s Oumar Koureissi are implicated in a far-ranging indictment of players from various schools, with former athletes at North Carolina A&T, Alabama State, and Coppin State included.
The charges, according to a report from The Athletic, stem from “an alleged conspiracy to bribe and manipulate college basketball games involving then-active college athletes.”
U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania David Metcalf said, “This is a prosecution of the criminal corruption of college athletics.”
According to the charges, former LSU/NBA player Antonio Blakeney and two other men, Shane Hennen and Marves Fairley “recruited college players with bribes and then asked them to help fix games so their teams would not cover the spread — the number of points by which a sportsbook predicted a team would lose its game. The players, prosecutors say, were offered between $10,000 to $30,000 for each game to be a part of their gambling ring.”
The charges are a part of an investigation that dates back to last fall, when several players were implicated in a scheme that included “betting against their own team, game manipulation and sharing information with third parties for gambling purposes.”
