by Alex Lloyd Gross
In January of this year, US Attorney David Metcalf announced the dismantling of a massive point shaving and sports betting ring that defrauded people out of over a million dollars. You can read the original story here. Smith entered a guilty plea this year.
He just got sentenced to six years in prison. Since he was a convicted felon, he was not supposed to posses a gun. He had one anyway, when agents raided his North Carolina home. restitution of approximately $1.1 million, and forfeiture of $75,000 in proceeds. This sentence reflects that as well, Metcalf said.
Jalen Smith was a “fixer” in the scheme, working together with others to recruit and bribe NCAA men’s basketball players to under perform and help ensure their team failed to cover the spread in games during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 NCAA men’s basketball seasons.
Then, through various sportsbooks, Smith helped to arrange for large wagers to be placed on those games, betting against the team whose player or players they had bribed to engage in this point-shaving scheme. Smith had a leadership role in the scheme, particularly in recruiting, managing, and paying players for their roles in the scheme.
Smith and other fixers approached and communicated with the players, in person and through social media, text message communications, and cellular telephone calls, offering the players bribe payments, usually ranging from $10,000 to $30,000 per game.
Smith and other 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 in their scheme 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.