A poker player has entered a guilty plea in connection to basketball player Jontay Porter's lifetime ban from the NBA for betting on games.
Long Phi Pham ("Bruce"), who claims to be a poker pro, was arrested at JFK airport and charged with wire fraud conspiracy, a federal crime, in June. He admitted to the charge on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Porter played parts of two seasons in the NBA, most recently last year with the Toronto Raptors. The center out of Missouri started a handful of games last season but provided minimal output offensively, scoring just 4.4 points per game and grabbing 3.2 rebounds.
But despite doing little to help his team win games, Porter made headlines during the 2023-2024 NBA season. The 24-year-old was banned from the NBA on April 17 for admitting that he helped bettors by intentionally underperforming in games. Porter's situation differed from the recently deceased Pete Rose, the Major League Baseball legend and all-time hits leader who bet on baseball games while managing the Cincinnati Reds, but he only bet on his team to win.
Porter, on the other hand, performed poorly intentionally or exited games with fake injuries to help Pham and other alleged co-conspirators win bets. Pham and his co-conspirators profited more than $1 million betting on the disgraced NBA player, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
Porter left a game against the Los Angeles Clippers on January 26 after just four minutes, claiming he reaggravated an eye injury. The Raptors lost 127-107, but the co-conspirators made over $45,000 betting on the game. It was one of multiple similar incidents during the 2023-2024 season involving the now banned hoopster.
Per court documents obtained by PokerNews, Pham and his co-defendants — Ammar Awawdeh, Mahmud Mollah, and Timothy McCormack — "did knowingly and intentionally conspire to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud an online sports betting company."
The online sportsbooks used by Pham and his co-conspirators were not disclosed in the unsealed complaint and were referred to as "Betting Company 1" and "Betting Company 2."
An investigation discovered that the co-conspirators placed "under" prop bets on Porter's team in January 26 and March 20 games based on the basketball player's early withdrawal from the games. Porter, according to the indictment, had "amassed significant gambling debts" to Awawdeh and paid off those debts by doing his part to ensure the "under" hit in certain games.
The FBI obtained Telegram text messages between the three co-conspirators and Porter, in which Porter stated that he planned to exit the March 20 game against the Sacramento Kings due to a fake illness. Porter played just three minutes in that game and went scoreless.
Surveillance footage at an Atlantic City casino and an iPhone camera photo captured the co-conspirators together at a restaurant on March 20, the day they placed a hefty wager on the "under" in the Clippers-Kings game.
Pham, following the government's attempt to question McCormack, booked a one-way flight to Australia. But he was apprehended at JFK airport by law enforcement agents on June 3. He had in his possession at the time $12,000 in cash, $80,000 worth of cashier's checks, three cell phones, and a series of betting slips.
Porter was permanently banned from the NBA and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on July 10. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 18 and could face between 41 and 51 months in prison. Pham could face up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled for sentencing on April 25, 2025.
The poker player who was born in Vietnam but resides in Brooklyn, New York claims to be a "poker shark." He has $3,336 in lifetime live tournament cashes, according to The Hendon Mob, which includes a small cash in a 2021 World Series of Poker (WSOP) online event on WSOP.com (now WSOP Online).
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