Three Rebounds and a Federal Indictment — How Prosecutors Say Malik Beasley Bet Against His Own Stat Line.

On Monday, June 29, 2026, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment charging six people — including former NBA players Malik Beasley and Edward “Ed” Davis, and a current NBA player agent — in what the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York calls a sports-bribery, illegal-betting, and money-laundering conspiracy. The charges are allegations. Every defendant is presumed innocent.

The government’s theory is narrow and concrete: that Beasley, while playing for the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2023–24 season, told Davis in advance which of his own statistics he intended to fall short of — rebounds, in particular — so Davis and others could pour money into prop bets on the “under.” In return, the indictment alleges, Beasley’s gambling debts to Davis were reduced or wiped out. According to the indictment, a single night’s prop boiled down to a number a casual fan would never notice: three rebounds against a line of three and a half.

Beasley and Davis are now the fifth and sixth current or former NBA figures charged in a sprawling federal gambling investigation that, since October 2025, has swept in Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach — and Hall of Famer — Chauncey Billups, and that traces back to the league’s 2024 ban of Jontay Porter. This page lays out who is charged, what the indictment alleges, the money involved, and how it fits the larger scandal — while drawing the line between an allegation and a conviction.

• 6 defendants — charged in the EDNY indictment — Malik Beasley, Edward Davis, agent Paolo Zamorano, William Brown, Robert Gorodetsky, and Ernesto Plascencia · Source: DOJ EDNY
• 4 games — during the 2023–24 season that prosecutors say Beasley agreed to manipulate his stats in, while with the Milwaukee Bucks · Source: DOJ EDNY; ESPN
• 3 rebounds vs. a 3.5 line — Beasley's rebounding total in the Jan. 26, 2024 Bucks–Cavaliers game the indictment says he told Davis he would underperform in · Source: ESPN; CBS Sports
• ~$75K wagered, $121K+ won — prop bets the indictment ties to the scheme, part of fraudulent wagers totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars · Source: ESPN; NBC News
• 20 years max — maximum prison term on each of the wire-fraud and money-laundering conspiracy counts; bribery in sporting contests carries up to 5 years · Source: DOJ EDNY
• Charged — not convicted — the indictment is an accusation; all six defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty · Source: DOJ EDNY

The indictment, dated June 24 and unsealed on June 29, 2026 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, names six defendants: Malik Beasley and Edward Davis, both former NBA players; Paolo Zamorano, a current NBA player agent described as Davis’s agent; and three others — William Brown, Robert Gorodetsky, and Ernesto Plascencia. Prosecutors say Davis acted as Beasley’s “gatekeeper,” the channel through which non-public information moved.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, all six are charged with wire fraud conspiracy, bribery in sporting contests, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. Each defendant faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on the wire fraud conspiracy count and another 20 on the money laundering conspiracy count, plus up to five years on the sporting-bribery count. Davis, Gorodetsky, Plascencia, and Brown were arrested Monday; Beasley and Zamorano were not in custody, and Beasley’s attorney, Steve Haney, said he had coordinated with prosecutors for the player to surrender voluntarily this week.

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The mechanics, as the indictment describes them, are almost mundane — which is what makes them dangerous to a sport built on the assumption that players are trying their hardest. Prosecutors allege that ahead of NBA games, Beasley would tell Davis whether he intended to underperform — and at times overperform — relative to one or more of his betting statistics. Davis and the other co-conspirators then used that non-public information to place “fraudulent wagers,” the indictment says, on prop bets keyed to Beasley’s individual numbers.

The clearest example in the charging documents is a January 26, 2024 game between the Bucks and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Prosecutors allege Beasley told Davis he intended to underperform on rebounding; the group then placed numerous wagers on his “under rebounds” prop, and Beasley finished the night with three rebounds — below the 3.5 line some sportsbooks had posted. ESPN reported the scheme also targeted a February 27, 2024 game against the Charlotte Hornets, a March 10, 2024 game against the Los Angeles Clippers, and a March 21 game against the Brooklyn Nets.

In return for fixing his performance, the indictment alleges, Beasley accepted bribes — typically structured as reductions or payoffs of gambling debts he already owed Davis. The Daily Caller, citing the charging documents, reported that Beasley lost millions gambling across a nine-year NBA career that ended in 2025 and ran through Denver, Minnesota, Utah, the Los Angeles Lakers, Milwaukee, and Detroit. We note again: none of this has been proven, and Beasley has not entered a plea as of this writing.

Prosecutors put the fraudulent betting in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. ESPN, summarizing the indictment, reported wagers of roughly $75,000 producing winnings of at least $121,000on the manipulated games. By the scale of a casino, those are not enormous numbers — which is part of why prop-bet manipulation is so insidious. A single role player’s rebound total is a small, quiet market, easy to move and easy to overlook.

That is the structural risk the legalization of sports betting created. When every box-score line is a tradable market — rebounds, assists, made threes, minutes — the integrity of a game no longer depends only on who wins. It depends on whether a benchwarmer grabs his fourth rebound. The indictment is, in effect, a case study in how a $75,000 bet on a 3.5-rebound line can put a federal money-laundering charge on the table.

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“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”

NBA spokesman Mike Bass, on the unsealed indictment, June 29, 2026

Beasley and Davis did not appear out of nowhere. They are the latest names in a federal investigation that became public on October 23, 2025, when authorities announced the arrests of 34 people across two related schemes — one involving rigged prop bets, the other mafia-linked rigged poker games. Among those charged were Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, former player Damon Jones, and Portland Trail Blazers head coach and Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups, who has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors alleged Rozier tipped associates that he would leave a February 2023 game early, enabling more than $200,000 in bets on his underperformance.

The thread running through all of it is Jontay Porter, the former Toronto Raptors center the NBA banned for life in the spring of 2024 after finding he had manipulated his own availability and performance to benefit bettors. Porter later pleaded guilty in federal court. His case set the template prosecutors now allege Beasley followed: an insider quietly trading the one thing the betting public cannot see — his own intent to underperform.

The Beasley indictment is a small-dollar case with a large-stakes meaning. If the allegations are proven, a journeyman scorer turned the smallest line on a betting board — his own rebound total — into a payoff, and a federal prosecutor turned that payoff into a money-laundering charge carrying decades of exposure. It is the clearest illustration yet of the vulnerability the NBA built into its product when it embraced legalized betting on every individual statistic, and it is now the sixth time in under two years that a current or former player or coach has been swept into the same federal dragnet. We will update this page as Beasley enters a plea and as the case — and the broader probe — moves through the Eastern District of New York.

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Last updated June 30, 2026