Former Iowa State football player DeShawn Hanika was certainly one of greater than a dozen Iowa State and Iowa State athletes charged last 12 months with improper sports betting as a part of a state investigation into college sports betting.

Hanika, who has missed your complete 2023 season and is moving to Kansas in December 2023, has partnered with a technology company focused on sports betting integrity and compliance to educate college athletes concerning the dangers of not following betting rules.

Most of the athletes were accused of underage gambling, and in Hanika’s case, of registering accounts on mobile sports betting apps under different names. Others were accused of betting on games they participated in.

Ahead of the 2024 season, Hanika is partnering with Integrity Compliance 360, a technology company specializing in sports betting integrity and compliance. IC360 uses the software to send alerts when a player or other team member attempts to place a bet through a sportsbook. The hope is that other college athletes will learn from Hanika’s sports betting mistakes and stop themselves from losing their eligibility or facing charges that could lead on to prison time.

“If I can help one kid say, ‘You know what? I haven’t been caught yet, but I’m not going to take any chances,’ and stop, that’s enough for me,” Hanika told Andscape.

Growing up in Topeka, Kansas, Hanika wasn’t involved in sports betting.

No one in his family bet on sports, and he only knew about it due to the ads he saw on the web and TV. He knew almost nothing about sports betting. He didn’t even know that it was mostly illegal in America before 2018. He had only a vague idea about former Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose, who was investigated by MLB for claims that he placed bets on games he played in and managed. Hanika’s only connection to gambling was that his grandfather usually went to the casino to play slots.

“For me, gambling meant Thursday nights at the casino, playing the one-armed bandit and taking my grandmother out for a steak dinner buffet,” he said.

In the summer of 2022, Hanika placed his first bet on the DraftKings Sportsbook & Casino mobile app. He and his teammates were practically the one students in Ames, Iowa, attending a summer football camp. Hanika was bored on campus, so he figured why not place a bet on the UFC pay-per-view that night. He remembers only placing $2 and seeing the bet as something to make the fight more interesting.

Even though Hanika lost the primary bet, he doesn’t remember ever having any immediate desire to do it again.

“It didn’t affect me,” he said. “I had no inkling, no desire for it.”

After betting on the UFC for the subsequent few months, the subsequent sport he bet on was college basketball throughout the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in March 2023.

College basketball betting didn’t seem so mean, considering that the March Madness brackets are an American pastime. He had some irrational confidence in his picks due to his experience as a highschool basketball player. But like UFC, his college basketball bets were trivial. Hanika placed a 32-leg parlay on the primary round of the tournament, but he only bet 10 cents.

“I just bet every game in the first round and didn’t win,” he said. “So I’m not trying to get rich.”

Hanika was of legal age when he began betting in the summertime of 2022. However, he continued to use his mother’s account because after she told her about her interest in betting, she suggested he arrange an account in her name so she could monitor his activity.

Kimberly Hanika never expressed concerns about her son’s betting, as he placed fewer than 300 bets over a nine-month period, a median of 1 bet per day. According to the affidavit, Hanika’s total bets during that period were roughly $1,262, with a median stake of lower than $5.

However, on the morning of March 2, 2023, after Hanika finished training on the Cyclones’ team facility, a lady from the Story County District Attorney’s Office approached him and asked for a non-public conversation.

Hanika had no reason to imagine it was concerning the bets he had been placing over the past 12 months or so. He assumed it was about his landlord, who had been arrested the day before on a unique charge. Instead, the girl said it was concerning the illegal bets he had placed on his mother’s account. Ultimately, that may lead to charges of tampering with documents, a misdemeanor.

After Hanika answered all of the questions on his betting history, she served him with a search warrant and confiscated his phone. He went home and called his mother on his iPad before getting his phone back the subsequent day.

For the subsequent three to 4 months, Hanika had no contact with the prosecutor’s office until August 10, 2023, when Hanika’s stepfather sent him a screenshot of a social media post announcing that Hanika had been charged. Aggravated misdemeanors in Iowa carry a sentence of up to two years in prison and a high-quality of $855 to $8,540.

“So we found out about it on Twitter,” he said.

Throughout the ordeal—from being hassled on the team facility to having his phone confiscated to being charged—Hanika experienced a variety of emotions. He was scared and upset, and stressed concerning the hurt his family had suffered consequently of his actions. His high school-age brother was bullied by his classmates due to reports that Hanika is perhaps going to prison.

“I think it was harder for me, hearing about his embarrassment and my family’s embarrassment, than it was for me,” he said.

Hanika takes full responsibility for his actions. He doesn’t blame Iowa State or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, which initiated the investigation into the sports betting. He understands that he must have been more aware of the regulations regarding the identification of mobile betting. He said the foundations and laws regarding what’s and just isn’t allowed in sports betting are confusing.

The Cyclones program held meetings at the start of the 2022 season and informed players that they might not bet on their very own sports or reveal confidential team information. While he knew he was not betting under his own name, he saw nothing improper with what he was doing.

“I thought, I’m not betting on myself, I’m not betting on my team. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m not getting in my car at 2 a.m. and driving home drunk and hitting anyone,” Hanika said. “I’m not hurting anyone by sitting here and doing this.”

Because the Story County Prosecutor’s Office failed to charge Hanika inside 45 days of his Aug. 10 waiver of a preliminary hearing, she is charged with a misdemeanor count of tampering with a the charge was dismissed on October 2, 2023

After catching 17 passes for 244 yards and 4 touchdowns during his third season in 2022, Hanika trained with Iowa State throughout the autumn but didn’t play in a single game in 2023.

After speaking with his then-fiancée and now-wife, Kate, Hanika announced on December 11, 2023, that he would return home to the University of Kansas to play his final season of college football in 2024. However, torn Achilles tendon in April training has put this season in jeopardy. Hanika is on a medical break that may allow him to play in 2025.

“Now I attack every day as if I wanted to be reborn this year,” he said.

At the time of his Achilles tendon rupture, IC360 representatives approached Hanika to help spread his message to college athletes who is perhaps desirous about sports betting.

Business customers include UFC, LIV Golf and NCAA conferences: SEC, Big 12, AAC and Mountain West. The goal is to prevent sports betting compliance issues from reaching the extent of a state attorney or the FBI.

“Ultimately, it’s a three-party platform. The bookmaker’s operations will monitor all activity, the sports league or organization will essentially provide a database that lists the names and contact details of all banned players,” said Mark Potter, co-CEO of education and training services at IC360.

“And as a technology solution, we’ll monitor that, and all the data will be fed into it from the operator, through the database, through us, and then it’ll all be encrypted and stored in a very secure place.”

IC360 had been following what happened to Hanika and other athletes involved in sports betting and was desirous about working with him to educate other college athletes concerning the pitfalls of violating betting guidelines. Hanika initially declined to participate.

“I kept thinking that if I could just get away, if I could just stay calm, maybe all this would go away,” he said.

But his mother and wife told Hanika that he couldn’t run away from the incident perpetually, that it will follow him irrespective of what. They asked him how he wanted people to discuss him: only in negative terms or to twist it right into a positive one.

Hanika said he removed his pride and decided to use his story as a learning opportunity.

“I had to swallow my pride a little bit, and that was a big step for me,” he said. “And just accepting that, yeah, I made a mistake, this is what I did, let me help somebody else so they don’t have to go through that.”

As a part of the IC360 partnership, which the corporate calls the Gambling Awareness and Sports Integrity Program, Hanika has created videos about his experiences with sports betting, the teachings he learned after being accused and the risks college athletes face when gambling.

“I think he really wanted to show that he takes responsibility for what he does, but also show young athletes how easy it is to make mistakes and stop others from doing the same thing he did,” Potter said.

When I ask Hanika about his current stance on sports betting, he laughs and says he gets asked that query on a regular basis. His gambling days are over.

“I can live the rest of my life without any stress about it,” he said. “I don’t care anymore if I ever see another ad, if I have it on my phone, in my line of sight, if I place a bet on any sporting event. I don’t care.”

When asked what he would say to a college athlete desirous about sports betting, Hanika replied that he had already been contacted about it.

He joked that he would tell the person to give them his phone number straight away because Hanika would not let him. Then he told me how much his mother and stepfather had to pay to fight his case last 12 months.

“I said to myself, you know, it’s not that big of a deal if your parents have $60,000 to spend on a lawyer now,” Hanika said. “So let me know if it’s not that big of a deal.”