00:00Well, while this is happening, it looks like the government definitely has their eyes on some of the right prizes, as we would say here, because through legalized sports betting, they've been able to follow some of these potential illegal moves that have been making in the sports betting markets.
00:16And I know that, Sam, a story broke late last week about some potential irregularities in college basketball and the regulated market maybe was able to help figure this out. But is there more coming with the story? Are they legitimately finding that there could be some illegal business going on with the student athletes as well?
00:35Yeah, anytime the FBI and the US Attorney Office is involved in a sports betting case, there's definitely some serious things are going to shake here. There's definitely more to come. You had this integrity monitoring firm called IC360, which works, like you mentioned, Craig, with the regulated sports betting market to identify any suspicious betting patterns.
00:57They found what they're calling an illegal gambling syndicate, basically a ring that organized a very similar pattern of bets across 13 states and Canada targeting small conference schools in college basketball. These are schools like Eastern Michigan, Temple, New Orleans.
01:14And I don't think it's any coincidence that over the past year, we've also seen athletes at those schools suspended or banned for being allegedly involved in illegal gambling, manipulating their performance.
01:26These were bets that took place last year from December to January. So only a small amount of time. But it said that they targeted these first half point spreads at these smaller schools.
01:36You know, of course, maybe those can fly under the radar versus programs like Duke or UNC, where there's a lot more attention kind of paid to it.
01:44But the flip side of that is if there is a regular betting patterns at smaller schools, that's going to be flagged pretty easily.
01:50One of the guys who's been named in this case, actually, as a potential suspect is a Mississippi man named Marv's Fairley, who sells picks online.
01:58And he's also he has also relation to Shane Hennon, who is a co-conspirator in the Jonte Porter NBA case.
02:06If you remember that Jonte Porter suspended for life last year for manipulating his performance on different games.
02:12So they think that this ring kind of has bigger ties to different things going on behind the scenes and gambling.
02:18That's maybe not so legal, not so great.
02:21But I would say, you know, this could be a case of the regulated market working like it's supposed to catching bad actors.
02:27This could also be a case of, you know, just as sports betting becomes more more mainstream and more a part of our daily lives, you know, it promoting this kind of behavior as well.
02:36So I want to make sure that we're not saying that, you know, this is all great, that this is being caught.
02:41It's definitely not good that it's being caught.
02:42It's good that we are catching it.
02:44But the fact that we keep talking about stuff more and more like this is is not a good thing.
02:48So we'll see what shakes in this case.
02:50Again, there's no formal charges have been filed.
02:53We don't know what will happen yet, but I imagine we'll get some more pretty soon.
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