Nevada prosecutors charged a DraftKings sports trader and a former Fresno State basketball player this week for allegedly rigging a prop bet on their own program and cashing out for just under $16,000. LegalSportsBetting.com reports that Steven Vasquez and Matthew Martin face charges of committing a fraudulent act in a gaming establishment and conspiring to cheat at a gambling game.
The scheme, per Nevada court documents, worked like a point-shaving plot with modern plumbing. Manipulate Mykell Robinson’s stat line in a 2025 game against Colorado State. Bet the under on exactly those numbers at a Las Vegas sportsbook. Vasquez, Martin, and a second ex-DraftKings trader named Samuel Silverman cashed a combined $15,950 for it — a weirdly modest number to risk a felony over, somewhere between “life-changing” and “used sedan.”
That number is the tell, though, not the embarrassment. Fifteen grand doesn’t buy a new life. It buys exactly what three guys with real inside knowledge and real market access figured they could get away with quietly. Martin traded college basketball markets for a living, which means he understood, better than almost anyone outside the building, how a book prices a stat line and how thin the margin sits around it. That’s insider access and market knowledge doing exactly what gambling-integrity advocates have warned about for years. It’s not a hypothetical anymore.
Silverman’s timeline makes the pattern harder to write off as one bad actor. He was arrested back in May, months before Vasquez and Martin, and has since pleaded not guilty to the same felonies. Two traders out of the same Las Vegas office, allegedly running the same play, on two different arrest dates. That’s not a coincidence anybody should feel good about.
DraftKings’ response is technically airtight. A spokesperson told ESPN that “the alleged activity at issue did not occur on DraftKings’ platform, and the individuals involved are no longer employed by the company” — true, since the sportsbook has no Nevada license and neither trader had any role setting college basketball odds. None of that touches the actual exposure. The issue was never which app processed the winning ticket. It’s that a company whose entire pitch rests on trusting its pricing employed the two people allegedly best positioned to exploit it, using knowledge they only had because of the job.
This is exactly the scenario every responsible-gambling ad campaign wants buried. The industry spends its marketing dollars on self-exclusion tools and problem-gambling hotlines, both worth having, while the real risk sits one cubicle over from whoever is pricing Tuesday night’s player props. ESPN betting reporter David Purdum flagged the charges the moment they landed:
People who track this market for a living reacted with recognition, not shock.
Jontay Porter got a lifetime NBA ban for something adjacent to this. Terry Rozier is still working through his own federal case. Fresno State didn’t do this, and the rest of that locker room didn’t either. A trading desk in Las Vegas did, allegedly, and a $31-billion industry would very much like the conversation to stay on the word “allegedly” instead of the word “trader.”
