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Jontay Porter will never play another game in the NBA after he was banned for life in connection to the gambling scheme that blew up in his face earlier this year, and he could end up spending the next few years in prison after pleading guilty to the federal charges he was hit with as a result.
Prior to the start of the most recent NBA season, Jontay Porter was best known for being the younger brother of Nuggets big man Michael Porter Jr. However, that all changed when the man who spent the bulk of the campaign coming off the bench for the Raptors found himself at the center of a gambling scandal involving inside information linked to prop bets.
In March, we learned Porter had attracted the scrutiny of sportsbooks who were alerted to suspicious betting patterns concerning games where he prematurely exited the contest while citing illness or injury, and an investigation eventually determined he’d tipped off multiple people who hammered the under on prop bets that subsequently cashed.
In April, the NBA announced it had collected enough evidence to justify its decision to give Porter the Pete Rose treatment and ban him for life, but his problems didn’t end there.
Last week, federal prosecutors revealed they’d decided to charge him with wire fraud over the scheme that reportedly stemmed from a significant gambling debt he’d managed to accrue, and according to The Associated Press, he entered a guilty plea in a courtroom in New York on Wednesday while taking full responsibility, saying, “I know what I did was wrong, unlawful, and I am deeply sorry,”
As things currently stand, Porter faces between three-and-a-half and four years in federal prison on top of the fines and restitution he could be ordered to fork over, although he could end up getting a reduced sentence thanks to his decision to cooperate in a case where four people who profited from the inside information he doled out have also been charged.
Porter has been released on a $250,000 bond and is currently slated to learn his fate at a sentencing hearing scheduled for December 18th.