Malik Beasley To Plead Guilty In NBA Betting Case
Former Detroit Pistons guard reverses July not-guilty plea, agrees to plead guilty in December over an alleged scheme to manipulate his statistics during the 2023-24 season.
Malik Beasley has agreed to plead guilty in the federal case accusing him of manipulating his on-court performance as part of an NBA betting scheme, reversing a not-guilty plea he entered in July.
His attorney, Steve Haney, confirmed the plea agreement to multiple outlets on Tuesday, according to Legal Sports Report. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, and Beasley is scheduled to formally change his plea on 9 December in Brooklyn federal court.
The 29-year-old faces four charges tied to his sole season with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2023-24. Prosecutors accuse him of conspiring to commit wire fraud and money laundering, alongside counts of bribery in sporting contests and a separate conspiracy built around honest services wire fraud. It remains unclear which of the four counts the agreement will resolve.
Federal prosecutors allege Beasley conspired with a group of bettors to alter his statistical output in at least four games that season, after running up millions of dollars in gambling losses. The indictment claims he passed along advance information that allowed others to bet on his statistics coming in under the posted lines.
Beasley was indicted in June alongside five other defendants, including former NBA forward Ed Davis. Co-defendant William Brown has already pleaded guilty, and Legal Sports Report reports that Robert Gorodetsky and Ernesto Plascencia are expected to do the same. Davis and former agent Paolo Zamorano have both maintained not-guilty pleas.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn, who lead the case through the Eastern District of New York's U.S. Attorney's Office, have given no indication of what sentence they will recommend once Beasley enters his new plea.
The case has stalled a career that was trending upward. Beasley set a Pistons franchise record with 319 three-pointers last season, finishing one make behind league leader Anthony Edwards while shooting 41.6% from beyond the arc and averaging 16.3 points, enough for a runner-up finish in Sixth Man of the Year voting.
Detroit had reportedly been preparing a three-year, $42 million contract to re-sign him, more than double his previous salary, before the federal investigation surfaced during free agency. The Pistons pulled the offer, and Beasley has not appeared in an NBA game since.
The plea deal lands as the league pushes further betting-integrity reforms following separate federal cases involving Jontay Porter, formerly of the Toronto Raptors, and Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat. Earlier this month the NBA instructed sportsbook partners to stop offering parlays that combine multiple player-statistic unders, along with under bets on players projected for fewer than 12 minutes, opening-tip wagers and certain individual-play markets seen as vulnerable to manipulation.
Legal Sports Report reported that the league relies on a formula to project playing time and sends sportsbooks daily lists of eligible players, though those projections do not guarantee a player actually takes the court.
This week the league named Kalshi and Polymarket as the prediction market exchanges it favours and struck a memorandum of understanding with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, steps it says will tighten information sharing and oversight of federally regulated prediction markets.