The sports world was shocked following the recent indictments against an NBA head coach and players over allegations of illegal gambling operations. But while the scope of these indictments seemed unprecedented in professional leagues, there is a long history of sports betting scandals in the United States — and around the world. Some of these date to the earliest days of organized sports, and these types of scandals remain commonplace.
NBA Mafia indictments
In October 2025, the NBA was rocked by one of the largest betting scandals in the history of sports: Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones were “among 34 people indicted in connection with two separate federal gambling investigations,” said CNN. The arrests came following a multi-year investigation that spanned 11 states and involved numerous Mafia members, including “members of the notorious Bonanno, Genovese, Gambino and Lucchese crime families.”
The members of these families allegedly “fixed illegal poker games as part of a highly sophisticated and lucrative fraud scheme to cheat victims out of millions of dollars and conspired with others to perpetrate their frauds,” said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. in a press release. The NBA players involved would “lure unsuspecting victims to high-stakes poker games, where they were then at the mercy of concealed technology” that “ensured the victims would lose big,” Nocella alleged.
The arrests “roiled the league, from players to front offices to agents,” said NBC News. There was additional anger because Jones was additionally “accused of disclosing privileged information to bettors about the injury status of a player.” This is a “very serious situation,” said Indiana Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle during a press conference. A day before the indictments were announced, the team’s “general counsel came down and read us all the regulations on gambling and warned our coaching staff, our players, our support staff about all these different things.”
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter
Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani is considered one of the greatest players in modern baseball, but his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was fired by the team in 2024 after an investigation “revealed he sent millions in wire transfers from Ohtani’s account to an illegal bookmaker,” said ESPN. Mizuhara eventually “pleaded guilty to bank fraud and filing a false tax return,” admitting to filing nearly 19,000 illegal bets that involved stealing nearly $17 million from Ohtani. He is currently serving a 57-month prison sentence.
The bookmaker, Matt Bowyer, was “sentenced to just over a year in prison, a result that gave him an odd bit of freedom,” said NPR. When it came to Mizuhara’s bets, there “had to be zero handicapping on what he was picking, and the parlays were just long shots. I mean, you might as well just take 10 grand and light it on fire,” Bowyer said to NPR. Ohtani himself was never implicated in the scandal.
Phil Mickleson
Like Ohtani, Phil Mickelson is considered one of the greatest players ever in his respective sport, golf; he is one of only 17 players to win at least three of the four major golf tournaments. But a 2023 book alleged that Mickelson “bet more than $1 billion on football, basketball and baseball over the past three decades,” said ESPN. One of his bets even involved a “$400,000 wager on Team USA in the 2012 Ryder Cup in which he participated.”
The book, “Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk,” was written by famous sports gambler Billy Walters. Mickelson “made a staggering 7,065 wagers on football, basketball and baseball,” with losses totaling nearly $100 million, according to an excerpt from the book. In 2011 alone, Mickelson “made 3,154 bets — an average of nearly nine per day.”
Mickelson had previously admitted to struggles with sports gambling, writing on social media that he was “so distracted I wasn’t able to be present with the ones I love and caused a lot of harm.” But Mickelson also “denied the claims he tried to bet on the 2012 Ryder Cup,” said CNN.
Pete Rose
Pete Rose is indelibly linked to the Cincinnati Reds, helping make the Big Red Machine one of the best dynasties in baseball history. But unlike other superstar-caliber players, Rose isn’t found in the National Baseball Hall of Fame; in the early 1990s, he “came under scrutiny by the league for allegations over placing bets on baseball after several betting slips belonging to Rose were found in an Ohio restaurant,” said The Sporting News.
As the controversy grew, Rose remained adamant that he did not bet on baseball games. This came even as an independent report “ultimately found evidence to indicate Rose gambled on baseball while he was a manager of the Reds, including while he was a player-manager,” said The Sporting News. Rose was eventually declared permanently ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
Years later, Rose finally admitted to the gambling, revealing that he “bet on the Reds ‘every night’ while he was manager of the team,” said ESPN. Rose died in 2024 at the age of 83, and MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred removed him from the ineligible list for the Hall of Fame, reportedly at the insistence of President Donald Trump. Rose “will have an opportunity in two years to be inducted,” said PBS News.
Paul Hornung and Alex Karras
Two of the best football players of the early NFL, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras, were suspended for “betting on league games and associating with gamblers or ‘known hoodlums,’” said The New York Times in a 1963 article. Hornung, a star halfback for the Green Bay Packers, was accused of a “pattern of betting and transmission of specific information concerning NFL games for betting purposes,” while Karras, a star defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, had allegedly “made at least six significant bets on league games since 1958.”
It was revealed that at least “five members of the Detroit Lions bet $50 apiece on the Green Bay Packers to win the NFL championship,” said Time, revealing a wider-scale scandal than previously thought. Both Hornung and Karras served one-year suspensions from football. Hornung “returned to help the Packers win NFL championships in 1965 and 66,” said CBS Sports; Karras was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.
Chicago Black Sox
There is perhaps no greater encapsulation of a sports scandal than this one. Given the scandal, involving the 1919 Chicago White Sox, occurred over a century ago, the exact details are unclear. But “one central and indisputable truth endures: Talented members of that White Sox club conspired with professional gamblers to rig the outcome of the 1919 World Series,” said the Society for American Baseball Research.
Eight players on the team, who were nicknamed the Black Sox by the media, were originally implicated in the scandal, most notably baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. In court, prosecutors claimed that each of the players was “promised up to $20,000 to throw games and possibly the entire series,” said the Chicago History Museum.
A grand jury indicted the players on charges of conspiracy to defraud. But when the case went to trial, the jury “acquitted the players on all charges,” said the Chicago History Museum, and “no other charges were ever brought about for anyone else involved in the scandal.” The players were eventually banned from baseball and the Hall of Fame, but their eligibility was reinstated alongside Pete Rose’s.
The recent indictments of professional athletes were the latest in a long line of scandals
