Man arrested in connection with ex-NBA player Jontay Porter betting scheme

Federal prosecutors and the FBI have arrested and charged a man with allegedly placing bets and coordinating his betting with former NBA player Jontay Porter who was kicked out of the league earlier this year, according to NBA league records and a copy of the criminal complaint filed by prosecutors in Brooklyn.

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Long Phi Pham, aka “Bruce”, 38 and from Brooklyn, was arrested on Monday at JFK airport after he allegedly booked a one way ticket to Australia just a day after federal investigators tried to interview him and was in federal court this afternoon where he was ordered detained, the FBI said. He faces charges of wire fraud. Three other people allegedly involved in the scheme remain at large according to federal prosecutors.

The criminal complaint against Pham does not identify the NBA player by name but the charging documents say that the player only played 4 minutes on Jan. 22 with three rebounds and one assist – statistics that match Porter’s stats for the day -- and that he had reaggravated an eye injury which Porter also had claimed. A description of a NBA player banned and why they were banned by the NBA also appears in the complaint and it matches Porter.

Porter has not been charged in this complaint. He has been permanently banned by the NBA.

Representatives for Porter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

It was not immediately clear whether Pham had retained an attorney. No contact information for him could be found.

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The charging documents say that Porter “had amassed significant gambling debts” to Pham and others. The document says that one of the people still at large encouraged Porter to clear the debts by “withdrawing from certain games prematurely to ensure that under prop bets on [Porter’s] performance were successful.

“Video footage of the January 26 Game neither shows any contact with Player 1’s eyes, nor any apparent reaggravation of the eye injury” and he “did not subsequently complain to team officials about the purported eye injury after the January 26 Game and played in his team’s next game two days later”, the complaint says.

The defendants then allegedly placed bets on the game netting them profits of over $100,000.

The scheme allegedly played out again in March of this year when Pham and the others all met at an unnamed casino in Atlantic City to place bets on Porter because Porter told them over Telegram that he would remove himself from the game on March 20 early, saying he was ill, the documents say.

Surveillance photos in the complaint allegedly show the defendants at the casino. The documents say that Porter would receive a percentage of the profits for participating in the scheme.

When Pham was arrested at JFK, the FBI says he had “approximately $12,000 in cash; two cashier’s checks totaling $80,000; a series of betting slips; and three cellular phones.”

If convicted, the maximum sentence for Pham is 20 years in jail. Attorney information was not immediately available.