Jontay Porter, the former NBA player banned from the league for life for betting on games and disclosing confidential information to gamblers, has issued his first statement since the ban was announced. That statement came via his attorney, Jeff Jensen, and indicated that he is fully cooperating with authorities.
"Jontay Porter is a good young man with strong faith that will get him through this. He was in over his head due to a gambling addiction. He is undergoing treatment, and has been fully cooperative with law enforcement," the statement read.
A league probe found that Porter bet on a total of 13 NBA games between January and March of 2024, and one of those bets was on his team, the Toronto Raptors, to lose. Porter did not appear in any of those games, but the NBA also found that he shared confidential health information with bettors, including that he planned to limit his own participation by claiming he was injured. This allowed those bettors to place large parlay bets on his individual statistics coming in below the projected line.
Three people, Timothy McCormack, Mahmud Mollah and Long Phi Pham, have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their role in the Porter scandal. A fourth, Ammar Awawdeh, turned himself in. Porter himself has not been charged and is not named in the case.
A court complaint accuses Awawdeh of pressuring Porter, referred to as "Player 1," into covering gambling debts by taking himself out of at least two games, one of which came against the Sacramento Kings on March 20 and another which came on January 26 against the Los Angeles Clippers. He played less than three minutes in the Kings game and fewer than five in the Clippers game. Mollah stood to win more than $1 million on the March 20 game, but was not able to collect most of it. None of the four defendants have yet entered pleas in the case.
