(New York) Three Americans are being prosecuted for sports betting fraud, with the alleged complicity of a professional NBA basketball player during two games this year, the New York federal prosecutor’s office said Thursday.
The North American professional basketball league NBA announced in April that it had suspended Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter for life for rigged sports betting.
The name of this 24-year-old American player is redacted from the indictment of the federal prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn, the eastern borough of New York, but there is no doubt that it is Jontay Porter according to the specialized press and a judicial source.
AFP confirmed this by cross-referencing information from the courts on these rigged bets, game statistics and the NBA’s internal investigation into the matches of January 26 and March 20.
With the complicity of this player, the Americans “Timothy McCormack, Mahmud Mollah and Long Phi Pham, alias “Bruce”, and others, knowingly conspired to devise a plan to deceive and defraud a pharmacy. online sports betting”, according to American justice, citing the investigation by the federal police (FBI).
According to investigators, the three men bet and won tens of thousands of dollars – one of them even pocketed 1.12 million according to the courts – knowing in advance that the NBA player would ask to leave the field for health reasons even though he was fit in previous matches.
The FBI, alerted by online betting companies, analyzed messages and money movements between punters on their mobile phones.
Timothy McCormack and Mahmud Mollah were charged on Thursday and released on bail, while Long Phi Pham was arrested on Monday at New York’s JFK airport on his way to Australia with a sum of cash.
Jontay Porter is a modest NBA player, playing in just 37 games between the 2020-2021 and 2023-2024 seasons. He is the younger brother of Michael Porter Jr., an important player for defending champion Denver.
The NBA accuses him of having participated in around ten rigged bets.
“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of the NBA competition for fans, teams and everyone associated with our sport,” thundered Adam Silver, the boss of the league, in April, banning basketball player for life.
In the United States, a majority of states have legalized sports betting since a Supreme Court decision in 2018.