Two former Alabama State basketball players were indicted on Thursday in an alleged NCAA bribery and point-shaving scheme.
According to the DOJ, the two former Alabama State players indicted are Shawn Fulcher for bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud and Corey Hines for bribery.
The indictment also alleges former UAB forward Bradley Ezewiro committed bribery and wire fraud while at Saint Louis University.
According to the DOJ, during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 NCAA men's basketball seasons, the defendants agreed to recruit NCAA players who would help ensure that their team failed to cover the spread of the first half of a game or an entire game. The fixers would then place wagers on those games, betting against the team whose player or players they had bribed to engage in this point-shaving scheme.
Defendants approached and communicated with NCAA basketball players, in person and through social media, text message communications, and cellular telephone calls, the indictment alleges, with the fixers offering the players bribe payments, usually ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game, to participate in the scheme.
The indictment alleges that the fixers specifically targeted college players for whom the bribe payments would meaningfully supplement, or exceed, the student-athletes' legitimate opportunities for "Name-Image-Likeness" compensation. The fixers also generally targeted players on teams that were underdogs in games and sought to have them fail to cover the spreads in those games. Many of these players accepted the offers and agreed to help fix specific games so that the fixers would win their wagers.
The indictment alleges that the defendant fixers engaged in a point-shaving scheme involving, in total, more than 39 players on more than 17 different NCAA Division I men's basketball teams who then fixed and attempted to fix more than 29 NCAA games. To capitalize on this scheme, the fixers made wagers totaling millions of dollars, generating substantial proceeds for the fixers and the players who collectively received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribe payments for fixing their teams' basketball games. When the fixers were successful with their wagers on fixed games, the indictment further alleges, they traveled to NCAA campuses and made cash bribe payments to the players who had agreed to participate in the point-shaving scheme.
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