NEW YORK — Two more men were charged on Thursday sports betting scandal which led the NBA to ban the former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter for the life.
Timothy McCormack and Mahmud Mollah are now joined by two other men – Long Phi Pham and a fourth whose name remains redacted in a court complaint — as defendants in a federal wire fraud case over bets allegedly based on a player’s tips about his plans to leave two games early.
Prosecutors have not publicly named Porter in connection with the case, but game dates and other details about “Player 1” mentioned in court documents match Porter and his ban from the NBA in April. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn declined to comment on whether the former forward is under investigation.
We could not immediately find current contact information for Porter or any agent or other representative he may have.
An NBA investigation found in April that he warned bettors about his health and then claimed to be sick to leave at least one game and make some bets successful. Porter also bet on NBA games in which he did not play, once betting against his own team, the league said.
Prosecutors say McCormack, Mollah, Pham and the still-unknown fourth defendant participated in a scheme to get “Player 1” to leave the court so they could win bets against his performance.
And they won, with Mollah’s bets on a March 20 game netting more than $1 million, according to the complaint. It said Pham, the gambler and the unnamed defendant were each supposed to receive about a quarter of those winnings, and McCormack a 4% cut, before a betting company got suspicious and stopped Mollah from collecting most of the money. money.
McCormack also cleared more than $69,000 in bets on that game and another on Jan. 26, the complaint said.
His lawyer, Jeffrey Chartier, said Thursday that “no case is clear cut.” He declined to comment on whether his client knows Porter.
Lawyers for Mollah and Pham declined to comment on the allegations.
McCormack, 36, of New York, and Mollah, 24, of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, were each granted $50,000 bail following their arraignments on Thursday. Pham, charged earlier this week, was released Thursday to house arrest and electronic monitoring on $750,000 bond. The 38-year-old Brooklyn resident also uses the first name Bruce.
According to the complaint, “Player 1” had accumulated significant gambling debts by early 2024, and the unnamed defendant encouraged him to fulfill his obligations by making a “special” – his code for quitting certain games early to ensure success bets that he would exceed expectations.
“If I don’t make a special deal with your terms. So everything is ready. And you hate me and if I don’t get 8 thousand by Friday, you will come to Toronto to beat me,” the player said in an encrypted message, according to the complaint.
It says he told the defendants he planned to withdraw from the Jan. 26 game early, citing injury.
Porter played 4 minutes and 24 seconds against the Los Angeles Clippers in that game before saying he aggravated an eye problem. He scored no points, 3 rebounds and 1 assist, below what sportsbooks expected. This meant a payday for anyone who bet “under”.
Then, the complaint says, the player told the defendants that he would leave the March 20 game claiming he was sick. Porter played 2 minutes and 43 seconds against the Sacramento Kings that day, finishing with no points or assists and 2 rebounds, again below the betting line.
After the NBA and others began investigating, the player warned Pham, Mollah and the unidentified defendant via an encrypted messaging app that they “could be hit wa rico” — an apparent reference to the common acronym for a federal charge of extortion — and asked if they had deleted “all the stuff” from their phones, according to the complaint.
NBA players, coaches, referees and other personnel are prohibited from betting in any of the league games or in events such as draft picks.
In banning Porter, NBA commissioner Adam Silver called the forward’s actions “egregious.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
