Maverick Carter, LeBron James’s manager, told feds he bet on NBA games

LOS ANGELES — Maverick Carter, the longtime manager and business partner of Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, admitted to betting on NBA games through an illegal bookie, according to federal law enforcement records reviewed by The Washington Post.

Carter made the admission during a November 2021 interview with federal agents investigating bookie Wayne Nix, who has since pleaded guilty to charges stemming fromhis role running a sprawling offshore sports-betting ring. Carter told agents he “could not remember placing any bets on the Lakers,” according to an investigative report summarizing the interview.

A spokesman for Carter and James confirmed the interview occurred. “In 2021 and before 38 states and the District of Columbia legalized sports betting, Maverick Carter was interviewed a single time by federal law enforcement regarding their investigation into Wayne Nix,” the spokesman, Adam Mendelsohn, said in a statement. “Mr. Carter was not the target of the investigation, cooperated, was never charged, and never contacted again on the matter.”

He declined to answer questions about James, saying Carter’s wagering “has nothing to do with him.” In the law enforcement interview, Carter denied placing bets for other people.

Carter, 42, is inexorably linked with James, who for two decades has been the largely scandal-free and business-savvy face of the NBA. Childhood friends from Akron, Ohio, they co-own a media company valued at hundreds of millions of dollars and are minority owners in the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool, the English soccer club.

The revelation that Carter gambled on NBA games comes as the league and broader American sports industry fully embrace legal betting — including the pending sale of an NBA team to a casino magnate — despite concerns about the integrity of the games.

Carter and his attorneys told investigators, the records show, thathe placed approximately 20 bets on football and basketball games over the course of a year, with each bet ranging from $5,000 to $10,000. An indictment in the case states that in November 2019, amid the Lakers’ championship season, Nix’s partner Edon Kagasoff told a “business manager for a professional basketball player” via text that he could increase his wagers up to $25,000 on NBA games.

NBA policies bar players, team and league officials from gambling on NBA games, but the league does not have purview over business managers or agents. The National Basketball Players Association, the players union, bars agents but not business managers from betting on the NBA. Both the NBA and the players association declined to comment.

Nix and his partners had a client list full of athletes and others in sports, according to prosecutors, including former MLB star Yasiel Puig.But Nix had particularly deep connections in basketball, previously unreported records show.

Retired NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen also admitted to placing at least one bet with Nix, according to a separate investigative report reviewed by The Post. And Nix golfed in a member’s-only tournament at Michael Jordan’s exclusive golf club in Florida, where other participants included multiple NBA team owners, in addition to stars in other sports, Hollywood, finance and the media. There are no indications in court records reviewed by The Post that Jordan, who until recently owned the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, bet on sports through Nix.

Jordan’s longtime agent, David Falk, declined to comment on what if any relationship Jordan has with Nix. Jordan’s business manager, Estee Portnoy, did not respond to a request for comment. Pippen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Though Carter and Pippen were not previously identified in public court records, their interviews were referenced in a court dispute this year between prosecutors and Puig. Puig is the only athlete client to be charged in connection with Nix’s operation, accused not of illegal betting but of lying to investigators, which he has denied. In legal filings, prosecutor Jeff Mitchell stated that Carter and Pippen made “arguably” or “technically” false statements during their interviews but then clarified them. Neither was charged. Puig’s trial is scheduled for January.

The Justice Department declined to respond to specific questions for this story. After a reporter sought comment from Mitchell concerning Carter and Pippen, the prosecutor filed a motion citing that request and seeking to seal more records in the case “to prevent further dissemination of the identities of other Nix clients.”

Nix and several others have been indicted in connection to the betting ring, in which a network of American bookies used a Costa Rican call center and website to place bets. Other than Puig, the indictments refer to but do not identify prominent figures in basketball, football and baseball who were allegedly among the illegal network’s 1,000-plus clients.

Nix’s sentencing has been repeatedly delayed. His attorney, Steven Madison, declined to comment.

Carter and Pippen were among dozens of “non-target witnesses” whom prosecutors and agents from Homeland Security Investigations and the IRS interviewed starting in September 2021, court records show. By then, the agents had already searched the homes of several of the bookies, and at least six targets of the investigation had pledged to cooperate.

Pippen told the agents in a phone interview that he considered Nix a “good friend” and golfing buddy. He denied knowing that Nix was a bookie, according to the interview report, and said, vaguely, that he believed Nix, a former minor league baseball player, lived off “the fruits of his labor.”

Pippen told investigators he “did not recall” placing bets with Nix, including on the 2019 Super Bowl, the report shows. But then the agents confronted Pippen with a specific bet that he placed on that event. Nix had offered Pippen a bet of $20,000 for a risk of $2,500, the report shows — an apparent example of the sort of promotions Nix gave some gamblers.

Pippen initially said he didn’t recall that bet, the report states, but then thought about it and remembered it. He told the federal agents that Nix “waived” his loss on that bet.

During the interview, one of the agents cautioned Pippen about the federal statute making it a crime to lie to federal investigators. The statute was among the charges levied against Martha Stewart, the report notes, though the agents told the basketball great that they “didn’t foresee Pippen’s answers triggering a violation” of the statute. Still, they “requested that Pippen provide truthful responses to the questions.”

The following month, investigators conducted a video interview with Carter, who was a passenger in his own car and joined in the interview by two attorneys. According to a report detailing the interview, Mitchell, the prosecutor, also explained to Carter, as investigators routinely do, the statute making it a crime to lie during such an interview.

Agents showed Carter photos of several people involved in the betting operation, according to the report, and he said he recognized just one of them: Nix, with whom he had played cards in Las Vegas on a couple of occasions.

Carter said he met Nix in 2017 or 2018 through a friend named Jeff from Ohio, whose last name Carter said he couldn’t remember. But other records shed light on connections between Carter and Nix’s operation.

In court and law enforcement records, prosecutors have identified an allegedly “significant client” of Nix’s sportsbook: Joey Schottenstein, son of Jay Schottenstein, an Ohio billionaire who has helmed companies that include American Eagle Outfitters. The Schottensteins are major Ohio State University donors, and LeBron James has referred to them as his “family.” James attended the wedding of Joey’s brother, Jeffrey, and he and Carter have helped promote Jeffrey’s clothing label, TACKMA — which stands for “They All Can Kiss My A--”.

Court records show that in 2019, Puig settled part of his own gambling debt by mailing Joey Schottenstein two checks totaling $200,000. In addition, Kagasoff, an admitted bookie who prosecutors said “operated the day-to-day functions of Nix’s gambling business,” counts Jeffrey Schottenstein among his friends on the payment app Venmo, which reveals some of the contacts in a user’s phone. (Kagasoff’s attorney did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

The investigative report does not state whether agents asked Carter if the man he knew as Jeff from Ohio was Jeffrey Schottenstein. Carter’s spokesman did not respond to that question from The Post. Jeffrey and Joey Schottenstein did not respond to requests to comment.

Carter told the agents that when he was in Las Vegas, Nix would tag along with him and others. Outside of Las Vegas, Carter said, he and Nix talked only on the phone. When the agents asked whether he still had Nix’s phone number, Carter said he deleted it after he learned that the government “was looking” at Nix. Carter shared with the investigators his own phone number that he said he texted Nix from and said that he used “no other phones.”

Carter acknowledged that he knew Nix was involved in gambling and said Nix owed him money from both poker and football. The 20 bets he placed through Nix were on college football, the NFL and the NBA, Carter told the agents, and he said he would text Nix his bets or place them directly through Sand Island Sports, the Costa Rican website Nix used. Carter said he didn’t know of Edon Kagasoff.

Carter said he paid and received winnings from Nix via wire transfers and cash, identifying one of his employees who he said handled the cash drops. The federal agents asked Carter whether he had been “truthful and not misleading” in any of his responses, according to the investigative report, and Carter said he was.

Agents brought up a different Carter employee, Tramonte Pointer, and Carter acknowledged that Pointer also had done money pickups and drops, the report states. Pointer did not respond to requests to comment. Asked again, Carter said he was being truthful.

Then, after the interview, one of Carter’s attorneys, Colin Jennings, emailed the prosecutor,Mitchell. In fact,Jennings wrote, the only person involved in the cash drops for Carter was Pointer, his driver, who is nicknamed “Cheese.” But since Pointer was driving Carter at the time of the interview, Jennings wrote, Carter “did not feel comfortable” discussing him. Additionally, Jennings said that Pointer dealt with Kagasoff “and may have spoken to others associated with him.”

Jennings also said Carter “may have communicated” with Nix via another phone, and the lawyer provided that number. Finally, Jennings wrote that while Carter does not recall how much he gambled with Nix, his bets were typically between $5,000 to $10,000, meaning the cash drops were probably $20,000 to $40,000. “We hope that this clarification and supplementation is clear and if you need any further information please let me know,” Jennings wrote.

Four months later, in March 2022, indictments were unsealed against Nix and fellow bookies in his operation. Puig was also laterindicted.

Prosecutor Mitchell referred to both Pippen and Carter, without naming them, in a filing this year in the case against Puig, who has alleged that he is a victim of selective prosecution because he is Black. A judge ultimately rejected that argument. In response to Puig’s motion, Mitchell described “false statements” by a “prominent Black athlete” — Pippen — and a “Black manager of a prominent Black athlete” — Carter — who were not charged.

“The government’s decisions not to charge the prominent Black athlete and the Black business manager... notwithstanding their false statements,” Mitchell argued, “undercuts [Puig’s] claim that the government’s actions arise from bias.”