Former LSU wide receiver Kayshon Boutte placed thousands of illegal sports bets — including some on the Tigers and himself — using a fake account while he was still a player there, Louisiana State Police said Thursday.
All told, the gambling on his FanDuel account amounted to 8,927 wagers totaling more than $600,000 over two years, arrest documents say.
Boutte was booked in Baton Rouge on a felony count of computer fraud and a misdemeanor count of gaming prohibited by persons under 21.
Arrest documents say that, on April 5, 2022, while still a player at LSU, Boutte opened a FanDuel account with his mother's credit card, using another person’s name and birthday.
In January, the account, which had the username “Kayshonboutte01,” began to receive several deposits from that card, as well as hundreds of deposits from another credit card that listed Boutte as the payer, according to an affidavit.
After Boutte opened a new account in Massachusetts in June under his own name, the company traced the credit card associated with it to the first account, the affidavit says, noting that Boutte turned 21 on May 7, 2023, therefore “making any wager placed by him prior to that date illegal.”
FanDuel provided State Police with a complete history of the first account’s nearly 9,000 wagers that spanned April 2022 to May 2023. Over two years, $637,537 was wagered from the account, with $556,272 won.
Seventeen of the bets were on college football games, and six involved LSU football.
Two of them included bets Boutte made on himself as part of an eight-leg parlay, in which a bettor wagers on multiple outcomes at once, police said. Boutte bet that he would score a touchdown and gain at least 82.5 yards against Florida State in the season opener Sept. 4, 2022. He did neither, recording 20 yards on two catches in a 24-23 loss.
Boutte made the bet the day before the game from LSU's football operations building, the document said. Investigators noted that Boutte, as an active player at the time, would have been one of the few people to have access to the building at the time when the bets happened.
"In July 2023, LSU was made aware of allegations regarding a former student-athlete’s improper conduct related to sports gambling while enrolled at the University," LSU said in a statement. "Since then, we have fully cooperated with all relevant authorities involved in the investigation and will continue to do so. We have no evidence that any other student-athletes participated in these prohibited activities, and we are grateful for measures that detect and discourage sports gambling related misconduct."
Boutte was drafted in the sixth round of the 2023 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots. He had two catches for 19 yards while playing in five games as a rookie.
After the 2022 regular season, Boutte said he would come back to LSU for his senior year. A few weeks later, he instead declared for the draft before the 2023 Cheez-It Citrus Bowl. Boutte had not been around the team and would have been suspended for the bowl game for an unrelated incident, sources told The Advocate.
A five-star recruit from New Iberia, Boutte led LSU with 735 yards receiving as a freshman. He emerged near the end of the season and set a single-game Southeastern Conference record with 308 yards receiving in a win against Ole Miss.
The next year, Boutte recorded 509 yards and nine touchdowns over the first six games. He then suffered a season-ending ankle injury at Kentucky that required two surgeries. Boutte was not as productive when he returned, finishing his junior year with 538 yards and two touchdowns in 11 games.
Boutte missed two games during the 2022 regular season. One, against New Mexico, was for the birth of his first child. Boutte also did not play against UAB because of the flu, LSU coach Brian Kelly said at the time, after going through pregame warmups.
It was later learned Boutte received a one-game NCAA suspension for receiving money from an autograph signing in the summer of 2021 shortly before players were allowed to profit from their name, image and likeness. It is unknown when Boutte served the suspension.
Legalized sports betting has grown throughout the U.S. since 2018. It was legalized in Louisiana in 2021 with online betting beginning January 2022.
It is illegal in Louisiana for anyone under the age of 21 to gamble. And sports betting remains barred in nine different parishes, though it is legal in East Baton Rouge Parish.
The NCAA prohibits anyone in college athletics, from athletes to coaches to athletic directors from participating in any kind of sports betting. It also bans them from providing information that could influence a wager.
College athletes who, “engage in activities to influence the outcomes of their own games or knowingly provide information to individuals involved in sports betting activities” could be permanently banned from NCAA sports. This also applies to athletes who bet on their own games or on other sports at their own schools, according to the NCAA.
If a student-athlete wagers on their own sport at another school, they could lose half a season of eligibility.
Still, easy access has led to a higher likelihood of cases in college sports. According to The Associated Press, the NCAA had found 175 infractions related to sports gambling since 2018 as of last summer. Boutte’s case was one of a few that have become public.
Last May, Alabama baseball coach Brad Bohannon was fired because of suspicious betting activity involving his team when it played LSU. That same month, Iowa and Iowa State announced a combined 41 athletes were suspected to have broken betting rules during a state investigation into sports gambling.
