Malik Beasley is negotiating a guilty plea in the NBA gambling case

The Malik Beasley case has reached the point where a plea deal may be next. His lawyer says talks with the U.S. Department of Justice are underway, which matters for high-risk payment providers because this is the kind of sports-betting fraud case that can ripple into bookmaker risk controls, transaction monitoring, and partner due diligence.

1. Steve Haney, Beasley’s lawyer, told The Associated Press that negotiations with the Department of Justice are ongoing. “We are negotiating an agreement with the government, with a direction expected in the next few days,” he said. He also told ESPN that Beasley has not yet signed any formal deal, and that a final resolution is expected at the beginning of this week.
2. A judicial notice filed Friday night in federal court in Brooklyn showed Beasley’s intent to change the not-guilty plea he had maintained since July. The judge forwarded the “change of plea” request to a federal magistrate judge, who will need to schedule the hearing.
3. The filing did not specify which of the four charges Beasley would admit to: sports bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
4. The indictment, announced in June 2026 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, says Beasley allegedly worked with co-defendants to decide whether he would perform above or below his betting lines for points and rebounds during the 2023-2024 season with the Milwaukee Bucks. Federal prosecutor Joseph Nocella Jr. said at the indictment press conference: “They turned professional basketball into a criminal betting operation.”
5. The court filing cites four specific Bucks games in which Beasley allegedly manipulated his performance: against the Cleveland Cavaliers on January 26, 2024, against the Charlotte Hornets on February 27, against the Los Angeles Clippers on March 10, and against the Brooklyn Nets on March 21. According to the case file, the co-defendants deliberately picked games that were not nationally televised to reduce scrutiny of the player’s performance swings.

Beasley’s NBA career covered nine seasons, six franchises, and close to USD 60 million in salary. The thing is, this case is not just about one player’s alleged conduct; it is part of a broader federal corruption probe into professional basketball, and the payment side of that ecosystem tends to get its own attention very quickly once prosecutors start mapping money flows.