Inside the historic Iowa athlete sports betting prosecution

Paula Lavigne and Adam Rittenberg, ESPN

THE COMPUTER SCREEN showed hundreds of dots on a map, each one indicating a sports betting app in use. One cluster of dots caught the investigator’s eye. He zoomed in and saw it was the athletic facilities at the University of Iowa.

The cluster was “one of those where once you see it, you can’t unsee it,” a source with knowledge of the map told ESPN.

The legal betting age in Iowa is 21, NCAA athletes and athletic staff aren’t allowed to gamble on NCAA-sanctioned sports, and only athletes and athletic staff had access to the facility. A high volume of activity there could be “indicative of some form of potential fraud, ID theft or something,” the source said.

In May 2023, Iowa law enforcement and prosecutors, noting data showing that sportsbooks rarely flag their own bettors, acted on what Brian Sanger, an agent of the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations, saw on that screen. The result was the nation’s first major crackdown on college athletes and gambling since a 2018 Supreme Court decision paved the way for legalized sports betting. At least 35 athletes and team support staff from Iowa and Iowa State — including football, baseball and basketball players, as well as wrestlers, notably several from Iowa’s highly ranked team — were charged criminally and/or lost all or part of their NCAA eligibility based on the information last year.

Prosecutors secured guilty pleas in all of their misdemeanor cases, but the four cases involving felony charges were dismissed when the accused questioned whether Sanger legally used betting surveillance technology. (Another case was dismissed due to a technicality.) More than two dozen athletes then filed a federal lawsuit alleging law enforcement had violated their constitutional rights by using geofencing software “illegally, and without a warrant” to identify athletes who were betting on DraftKings and FanDuel.

Sanger declined ESPN’s request for comment.

As the legal fallout continues, the Iowa case is poised to have national ramifications for how — and whether — law enforcement will be able to monitor and police illegal sports betting by athletes and how the NCAA may enforce its rules on gambling.

“It is literally an unregulated, almost completely unregulated, $2.5 billion industry,” one law enforcement source said.

“There is nothing ensuring compliance except for the sportsbooks’ pinky promise,” another added. “There’s no teeth.”

A FanDuel representative declined to comment. A DraftKings spokesperson told ESPN in a statement that the company “works closely with state gaming regulators and believes they hold operators to high standards” and is “proud to have played a role in bringing to light instances of suspicious activity.” (ESPN is a partner with Penn Entertainment, the operator of the ESPN BET sportsbook.)

Sportsbook industry executives who spoke on condition of anonymity said in an interview with ESPN that they are subject to multiple regulations, and it’s up to legislators and regulators to decide if there should be more. Enforcement is “not entirely on the sportsbooks. It’s an ecosystem,” one said, noting that the NCAA also has an obligation to better educate its athletes.

The athletes and their attorneys, meanwhile, point to what they call a vast overreach of police powers in a case that cost some of them their athletic careers.

“All it takes is an illegal investigation for you to miss out on the rest of your dreams,” former Iowa State running back Jirehl Brock said. “When your privacy was invaded and that’s the way that it happened, it puts an asterisk on the fact that we were doing it.”

ESPN spent four months reviewing emails and court filings in the case and interviewing multiple individuals close to the investigation, including attorneys, athletes, parents, school officials and Iowa criminal justice employees who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing lawsuit.

Throughout the reporting, a common thread was frustration: From law enforcement officials who feel powerless to police an exploding new industry they perceive as a threat to public health — and that is largely left to police itself — and from athletes who feel underinformed by their schools and persecuted by law enforcement they say operated outside its authority.

Rest is here…