In the hours before his game, on a mild February night in 2024 inside the on-campus Corbett sports center in Greensboro, North Carolina, Camian Shell allegedly sent a heart emoji in response to a text message he’d just received. By the end of the game, Shell’s North Carolina A&T men’s basketball team would suffer a huge halftime deficit and an eventual 84-58 defeat.
Shell’s heart emoji is now evidence in one of the largest and most sweeping federal investigations into alleged point shaving in college sports.
Shell, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment last week in Philadelphia federal court, is one of more than a dozen college athletes accused of accepting bribes from gamblers to take a dive and deliberately tank their performance on the court.
