Shane Hennen Pleads Guilty In Basketball-Fixing Case

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Hennen and others began recruiting and bribing CBA players in September 2022 to help fix games through point-shaving during the 2022-2023 season.

He then moved on to NCAA games, recruiting more than 39 players across 17 Division I programmes to influence the outcome of over 29 games during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 seasons. 

In particular, prosecutors say the fixers targeted players who could help ensure their team failed to cover the spread for either the first half or the entirety of a game, a method that made the point-shaving harder for sportsbooks to detect in real time. 

Court filings describe Hennen's role as placing or arranging large bets against teams whose players had been bribed to underperform, generating more than $3m in wagers tied to the fixed games and roughly $1.1m in resulting losses for sportsbooks nationwide.

Prosecutors separately linked Hennen to a scheme in which conspirators obtained inside information from NBA coaches and players, including Terry Rozier, and distributed it through a network of bettors who used it to win prop bets. 

In another case, Hennen was arrested at Las Vegas's Harry Reid International Airport in January 2025 over profits from prop bets tied to former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, who was banned from the NBA in April 2024 for violating the league's gambling rules; his defence attorney, Todd Leventhal, disputed prosecutors' account of the arrest.

Hennen still faces separate charges in a related federal probe into rigged, high-stakes private poker games that allegedly involved former NBA players Damon Jones and Chauncey Billups, along with members of organised crime families; he is accused in that case of supplying technology used to cheat at cards. 

He is scheduled to be sentenced on February 25, 2027, and faces a maximum possible sentence of 125 years in prison.

The case is among several sports-betting integrity actions to hit Nevada's gambling and betting community this year, as federal prosecutors continue to pursue match-fixing and illegal bookmaking rings with links to professional and college sport.