Ed Davis Pleads Not Guilty in NBA Gambling Corruption Case
The former NBA player was allegedly the conduit for Malik Beasley in a scheme to manipulate prop bets.
Ed Davis, the retired NBA player accused by federal prosecutors of being the “gatekeeper” to former teammate Malik Beasley and an alleged sports corruption scheme during the 2023-24 season, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to four counts in the Eastern District of New York.
Davis, 37, who last played in the 2021-22 NBA season, is charged with one count each of sports bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was released on a $100,000 bond.
Davis was indicted on June 24 and tabbed by federal prosecutors as the personal link and insider information conduit between Beasley – his teammate with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2020-21 – and a crucial source of leverage. The indictment claims that Beasley had “multi-million dollar gambling losses” and gambling debts to Davis that he “reduced or paid off” by soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for manipulating his performance to win prop bets for gamblers. Charging documents detailed four games impacted by the alleged scheme.
Details of Alleged Davis-Beasley Plot
Federal prosecutors allege that Davis helped coordinate a scheme to rig Beasley prop bets from December 2023 through April 2024, in which Beasley agreed to attempt to both underperform and overperform in certain statistical categories in different games.
Beasley, 29, who was indicted with Davis and four others, pleaded not guilty to charges of sports bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering on July 1.
Six co-conspirators in the indictment face a maximum sentence of 20 years of imprisonment for both the wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy counts, and five years for bribery in sporting contests.
Beasley, a guard, was coming off a 2024-25 season in which he averaged 16.3 points per game for the Detroit Pistons and finished second in the NBA Sixth Man of the Year voting. That June, however, it became known publicly that both the EDNY and NBA were conducting investigations into alleged gambling impropriety from earlier in his career. ESPN reported in August 2025 that the EDNY had cleared Beasley of any participation in the investigation that snared banned former NBA player Jontay Porter. But Beasley was eventually indicted at the end of his own investigation.
The NBA inquest never yielded a final public conclusion. After the 2025 season, Beasley was reportedly in line for upwards of a $42 million, three-year deal with the Pistons. He remains unsigned.
Status of Malik Beasley and Other Co-Conspirators
Beasley was released on $100,000 bond and ordered to reappear at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Aug. 6.
Paolo Zamorano, who was a registered NBA player agent until his indictment, pleaded not guilty to the same charge and was released under the same terms.
Federal prosecutors later named former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones as a co-conspirator. After originally entering not guilty pleas, he changed his pleas to guilty as a co-conspirator in the Terry Rozier and so-called “rigged poker” cases.
Indicted co-conspirators William Brown, 39, Robert Gorodetsky, 34, Ernesto Plascencia, 39, have not been arraigned in the Beasley case.
Shanne Hennen, also a co-conspirator in the Rozier case and NCAA point-shaving indictment unsealed in January, is scheduled to change his plea to guilty in the “rigged-poker” case, according to a document filed in the EDNY of Tuesday.
Court documents indicate that Hennen will be one of 11 co-conspirators to plead guilty to wire fraud conspiracy.
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