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Jontay Porter and Long Phi Pham "Bruce"

Porter

The following was taken from THIS FBI criminal complaint against Long Phi Pham also known as "Bruce" about his involvement in fraud against two major Sports Gambling books. He worked (or blackmailed) Jontay Porter into leaving games early in order to cash in on under bets.

The FBI report mentions 2 betting companies involved with this scandal, matched them to these 2 pretty quickly with info given.

Betting Company 1 - Draft Kings
Betting Company 2 - Fanduel

The January 22 Game

Prior to this game a text was sent by a conspirator in the Telegram that included Jontay.

Screenshot this .. Me,[REDACTED CO-CONSPIRATOR] [and] [REDACTED CO-CONSPIRATOR] is forcing Jontay to do this

Jontay would reply
I don't do a special with your terms. Then it's up. And u hate me and if I don't get u 8k by Friday you're coming up to Toronto to beat me up It can be inferred that the "special" was him leaving January 26 game early.

On January 22, 2024 Porter reported an eye injury he suffered in a game that day and was evaluated by doctors but never appeared on the teams injury list. Before the Jan 26 game Porter messaged in a Telegram group with Redacted Co-Conspirator and Pham indicating that he would be leaving the Jan 26 game claiming he was injured.

The January 26nd Game

Murray enters the game, plays 4 minutes (he averaged 11.2 per game) takes no shots gets three rebounds and an assist before subbing himself out claiming a re-aggrivation of his eye injury.

FBI and general fan consensus is that there was absolutely no contact with his eye during the game and Jontay would never mention the injury again and played 2 days later.

For this game, 2 fraudulent bets would be placed

Bet #1 : $7,000 bet by a redacted defendant parlay on the unders 4 of Jontay's prop bets (not gonna explain prop bets or unders here) which returned $40,250

Bet #2 : $10,000 parlay for all of Jontay's under props in points , assists and steals that returned $85,000.

FBI AND BOOKS NOTICE

The FBI Agent writing states that the relative was among several bettors who wagered the under on prop bets
Given this and the generally low impact that Jontay had on the games that he was in, there was so little betting action on his lines that very few betters were taking the Draft Kings lines for Jontay. One doesn't have to guess to assume how the suspicious bet monitoring systems they have in place reacted to bets of that size in such a low volume market.

This is not the first time people trying to play the books have been the only people taking the action on a particular bet, this makes it incredibly easy for these books to identify fraud. Especially when the small amount of bettors for a particular line are printing money like they were on Jontay.

A similar instance happened in College baseball recently where an Alabama Baseball coach was found to be betting against his own team, trying to place a $100,000 bet on a game NOBODY else bet on, see here

The March 20th Game

On March 17th Jontay has his best game of the season, following this game he would report to team officials and others that he was feeling food poisoning symptoms. Fighting through, Jontay suited up for the game on the 20th, not before texting Pham that he would be leaving the game early claiming he was ill, while also agreeing to a profit sharing agreement (24% of profits for Pham and Jontay) for money won on the bets.

On the 20th multiple redacted defendants and Pham met at a Casino in Atlantic City where one of them began placing bets hours before the game, it should be noted that these bets were placed physically with surveillance footage showing the defendants walking up to the teller and placing their bets.

After playing less than 3 minutes, Jontay has had enough and signals that he needs to be subbed out and would not reenter scoring 0 points and grabbing 2 rebounds (this is important to a bet). Jontay would never be placed on any injury list by the team. It should be noted that for these bets the FBI press release reference these as some of several bets placed on this game.

Bet #1 : $8,000 on DraftKings on Jontay's under for rebounds, returning 44,000$.

Now remember Jontay got 2 rebounds this game, using BettingPros we can see that Jontay's betting line on rebounds this game was 5.5 with the over being a noticable favorite. To net the 36k in a straight bet he had to have placed the alternate line which enabled him to get notably better odds at a much higher risk, unless...

betting line
Bet #2 : $10,000 on DraftKings on the under for Jontay's assists, returning $42,000. We can see the line is 4.5 and around even odds, so the bettor must have placed the bet using alternate lines again.

Bet #3 "The Big One" : The most ambitious bet so far at $80,000 a parlay of the under lines for all of Jontay's available betting lines (Points, assists, rebounds, 3 pointers, steals and blocks) that would return a total of $1,120,000

There are 3 other bets made by redacted defendants of much smaller amounts but all being winning parlays on Jontay's unders.

The End Times

DraftKings immediately began suspending accounts, contacting the International Betting Integrity Association who then went to the FBI On April 4th Jontay texts the telegram group chat which featured Pham among other redacted defendants that they might just get hit w a rico and asked if they had deleted everything from their phones.

The last real notable OPSec incident happened when one of the redacted defendants texted another defendant that "I reall need you to hound DraftKings. at least get me back my principle $" This is after the account's funds had been frozen, implying that the bet was made using his money that he had given to the co-conspirator to bet with.

One day after Pham was questioned by authorities, he bought a one way ticket to Australia and was apprehended at JFK International Airport as he prepared to board the flight and is awaiting trial.

In Summary

I feel bad for Jontay, I will say it, looking through his texts he seems truly afraid of the people hes "conspiring" with.

My guess is he accrued some gambling debts that were probably not NBA related, to the point where he seemingly is unable to pay $8,000 on a weeks notice (on an NBA salary with very wealthy family members). I think it is a cautionary tale of how someone had so many resources to get themselves out of a bad situation but didn't out of fear of involving others.

A lot of times in these athlete gambling scandals, it can be easy to ask "Why?" and in most instances its a very cogent question, but it seems Jontay was legitimately scared of people like "Bruce", and acted accordingly.

It is interesting to think of what could have happened if Jontay had put his foot down at some point, would we have seen an ESPN headline about the brother of MPJ getting kneecapped? Would he become a symbol of someone putting their health and reputation above the sanctity of the game? Or maybe nothing would have happened if he put his foot down, its not impossible to believe that Bruce and friends on realizing that Jontay was not going to throw NBA games, realized there was no alternative that didn't become a public scandal that most likely would put them in Federal Prison.

Pham / Jontay's Mistakes