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Former Arizona St. players expected to be indicted
in alleged point-shaving scheme

Posted: Tue November 25, 1997 at 12:32 PM ET

PHOENIX (CNN/SI) -- Next month, two starting guards on Arizona State's 1993-94 basketball team are expected to be indicted for their roles in an alleged point-shaving scheme. At least two gamblers also will be indicted, Sports Illustrated reports in this week's issue.

According to federal prosecutors, that's exactly what happened at ASU.

Sometime during the 1993-94 season, sources say, a scheme was hatched in an off-campus apartment building where ASU guard Stevin "Hedake" Smith lived. According to Sports Illustrated sources, Smith and another ASU starter, Isaac Burton, agreed to fix a number of Sun Devils' games for a group of gamblers.

Prosecutors believe points were shaved in two closer-than-expected wins; on January 27 against Oregon State and January 29 against Oregon. On February 19, the Sun Devils were favored by nine against USC. They lost by 12.

"There was a lot of money bet on that particular game and they did lose the game," said Art Manteris, vice president of the Las Vegas Hilton Sports Book. "And there were some eyebrows raised, and myself and some of my colleagues did start to take notice."

An agent for Isaac Burton told Sports Illustrated that Burton is cooperating with authorities and wouldn't comment further. When CNN/Sports Illustrated contacted Stevin Smith in March, Smith denied that any ASU games were fixed and denied being part of any point-shaving scheme.

Each year hundreds of millions of dollars are bet in Las Vegas on sporting events. The Super Bowl, Breeders' Cup and college basketball's Final Four attract intense attention from bettors and oddsmakers along the Vegas strip.

But on one spring weekend three years ago, all eyes were on the March 5 Arizona State basketball game against Washington -- and the suspicious betting activities of a group of mystery men.

"Three of them were fairly young kids, almost like college kids, and the fourth was an older gentleman, and they would just trade off betting," said Nick Bogdanovich, the Horseshoe Casino Sports Book director. "One would bet and then the next one would bet and then you'd see them walking to the exits to go across the street to bet."

A typical ASU game will attract $50,000 in legal bookmaking activity. On this Saturday, that figure swelled to the hundreds of thousands, an almost unheard-of occurrence when there isn't an injury to a major player.

"I went and made a big, big bet, minus the 5, and I played all around town," professional sports gambler Lem Banker said. "Then I realized I'm smelling a rat. There's something wrong with the game."

Oddsmakers and bettors watched the scene on the strip unfold with alarm and fascination.

"What these gentlemen were doing was betting the game like they had inside information," Bogdanovich said. "The way they were betting tipped me off that they probably had a few players."

Barry Lieberman was a federal prosecutor for the Justice Department and an assistant U.S. Attorney in Nevada and currently is general counsel for three Vegas casinos.

"In my mind," said Lieberman, "I'm fairly certain those games were intended to be fixed in some way; that someone had advance knowledge that Arizona State would not cover the point spread and were betting indiscriminately on Washington.

"That day rumors started to spread of college-age-type students coming in and betting large amounts of money on Washington. People the sports books had never seen before," Lieberman said. "And that prompted quite a bit of interest. And I believe the sports book managers started calling one another to find out if they knew who it was who was betting on Washington."

The betting was so suspicious that some books stopped taking bets on the game altogether.

"We did take the game down or stop wagering on that particular event after the point spread had moved a significant amount," Manteris said.

The amount of money bet on the game prompted someone from Vegas to call the Pac-10's offices in Walnut Creek, California.

"At 10:36 I received a call from a sports bookie who indicated there was some unusual betting activity on the ASU-Washington game, which was scheduled to take place later that afternoon," said Pac-10 associate commissioner David Price. "After I got off the phone with him, I contacted the athletic director at Arizona State, who at that time was Charles Harris."

After ASU was tipped off, the game tipped off, but not in the Sun Devils' favor. ASU missed its first 14 shots against an inferior Washington team, and by halftime looked like a team that needed a good talking to.

"There's a very strong feeling in light of the previous pattern -- that Arizona State had lost where there was unusual betting -- that in this game someone talked to them at halftime and advised them that there was a problem," Lieberman said, "and they went out and played the way they were supposed to play in the second half and ended up covering the point spread."

Said Price: "At the time, the report was that a Pac-10 official went into the locker room at halftime. To the best of our knowledge, that is not true."

No one from Arizona State has confirmed that such a conversation took place, either. FBI agents questioned Price a few months later, but the probe ended soon after, with many questions left unanswered.

Earlier this year, armed with new information, federal prosecutors in Phoenix empanelled a grand jury and issued subpoenas to casinos.

The indictments, expected early next month, are the result.