While sports betting is fully legal in Las Vegas and it has been for a long time, that doesn’t mean that Sin City is free of some illegal activity just like the rest of the country. With that said, news has broken that a Las Vegas resident is facing charges on a viral sports betting scheme. With this particular betting ring, it has to do with former college/pro players ‘point shaving’ during games, which has caught the country by storm.
In case you missed it, 20 people were charged in the basketball betting scandal, with Vegas’ Shane Hennen being among those included on the list according to a new report from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Per that report, Hennen had an impact on some of the games for the Jiangsu Dragons as part of this case – he told players to have an impact on the betting line.
Obviously, this is a major no-go and once these charges were brought to light, plenty of concern arrived all over the country, not just for the local sportsbooks. This of course isn’t the first time that illegal activity has come from basketball games, as former players have been charged with point shaving in the past too. This is a problem that is understandably taken very seriously.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal was able to obtain text messages from Hennen that highlighted the discussions leading up to the point shaving, which authorities of course are using as evidence moving forward. Illegal activity is of course nothing new in Las Vegas, but with the ties to college and pro sports, it really is a bad look for everyone involved here.
While a lot of the focus right now is on this pending case, keep in mind too that Vegas is prepping for illegal activity during the Super Bowl as well. Here, though, the worry isn’t on the players in the game shaving points or throwing things away. Instead, authorities are hoping to prevent illegal bets on the game from taking place. This is something that goes down each and every year.
Come next month, the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are getting ready to face off with the Lombardi Trophy on the line. The Seahawks are favorite by 4.5 points, holding -110 NFL Vegas betting odds per the local sportsbooks. The Patriots, with their +125 Las Vegas odds, are hoping to pull off a bit of an upset here, but that’s not going to be easy for them.
Thus far, a lot of the early money is going on the Seahawks to win it all. With that said, while plenty of bets are being placed in Las Vegas through the sportsbooks, you can also believe that illegal sports bookies are working overtime in taking in bets as well. Again, this is something that is not new in Las Vegas, as the Super Bowl always leads to millions of dollars being exchanged under the table.
People in Las Vegas also use off-shore accounts for their betting needs, which is a bit surprising. Despite that, yes, Vegas has been able to reduce things there by a bit, but the problem still persists. Leading up to the kickoff for this Super Bowl, the expectation is that countless illegal bets will be placed not only in Las Vegas, but all over Nevada too. Authorities will control as much as it can, but some issues still aren’t caught.
Back to the case that has shocked hoops fans, moving forward authorities are working to crack down on college basketball point shaving. Per the Las Vegas Review-Journal, nearly 20 college programs were impacted by this. The list includes Nicholls State University, Tulane University, Northwestern State University, St. Louis University, La Salle University, Fordham University, State University of New York at Buffalo and more.
Those may not be Power 4 programs, but it’s still eye-opening that those schools have been affected in this way. The absolute last thing anyone is going to want to see in the future is for schools like North Carolina, Kentucky, Duke, Kansas or a different blue blood to be impacted. That’s why it’s best to get ahead of things and prevent it from potentially happening now.
If anything, this basketball point shaving scheme has raised a lot of eyebrows and it has made people realize that illegal activity is now reaching student-athletes. College basketball in particular is so much fun to watch, but knowing there’s a risk of people connecting with the students and enticing them to change the outcomes of a game is concerning for several different reasons.
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