Professional basketball player Terry Rozier told a friend in 2023 that he planned to take himself out of a game early with a minor injury. The friend, Deniro Laster, used the tip to place more than $200,000 in bets predicting Rozier would fall short of his usual point total.

By the next morning, federal prosecutors say, the two men were counting their winnings together in Rozier’s home. The athlete, who was a guard for the National Basketball Association’s Charlotte Hornets at the time, played just nine minutes against the New Orleans Pelicans and checked out.

That incident, described in a federal indictment unsealed on Thursday in Brooklyn, now sits at the centre of one of the most sweeping sports gambling cases ever brought by the US Justice Department — one that stretches from locker

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