LEXINGTON, Ky. — Former college basketball guard Kerr Kriisa was arrested by FBI agents on the evening of July 3 in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme allegedly dating back to his time at West Virginia University, Kentucky Sports Radio first reported Saturday, sending shockwaves through college basketball circles and immediately ending the 25-year-old’s participation in an upcoming summer tournament.

The Fayette County Detention Center in Lexington confirmed to WKYT that Kriisa is being held in their facility following the arrest. Because the case is federal in nature, jail officials declined to release details of the specific charges or circumstances of his arrest. No bail has been set, and a court hearing was scheduled for the coming week in West Virginia, where Kriisa is being extradited according to the initial reporting from KSR’s Jack Pilgrim.

The allegations stem from Kriisa’s time with the West Virginia Mountaineers during the 2023-24 season, according to On3, which described the case as involving a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme without providing specific details about the nature of the alleged misconduct. Federal charging documents had not been made public as of the time of initial reporting, leaving significant questions about the scope and specific allegations at the center of the investigation unanswered.

The arrest carries particular resonance given Kriisa’s profile within the college basketball transfer portal era. Born in Estonia, Kriisa built his college career across four programs and six years, accumulating 127 appearances and starting 106 of those games across stints at the University of Arizona, West Virginia, the University of Kentucky and the University of Cincinnati. He averaged 8.8 points per game across his career and was, at various points, one of the more recognizable names in the transfer portal, having moved through successive programs while trying to maximize his final years of eligibility.

He began playing professional basketball in Europe at the age of 15 and committed to Arizona in 2020 following stints in Lithuania and Germany. His three seasons at Arizona showed consistent scoring improvement, and he started 70 of 76 career games with the Wildcats while becoming a key playmaking piece for the program under head coach Tommy Lloyd. He averaged nearly 10 points per game across his final two seasons in Tucson before transferring to West Virginia for the 2023-24 academic year.

His West Virginia season was simultaneously his most statistically productive and his most complicated. Kriisa started all 23 games he played for the Mountaineers and posted a career-high 11.0 points per game alongside 4.7 assists before suffering a season-ending hand injury. However, the season also included a nine-game suspension handed down by the NCAA for receiving what it classified as impermissible benefits during his time at Arizona, a violation that followed him into his West Virginia season and temporarily sidelined him early in the Mountaineers’ conference schedule. The suspension at the time attracted attention but was treated as an isolated compliance issue rather than a signal of anything more serious.

After West Virginia, Kriisa transferred to Kentucky for the 2024-25 season, where he appeared in nine games for John Calipari’s successor as head coach before a foot injury ended his season. The brief Kentucky appearance was nonetheless notable: he recorded a career-high 12 assists in a game against Bucknell and reached the 1,000 career points milestone in a game against Gonzaga, personal benchmarks achieved against the backdrop of a frustratingly short season. He then transferred to Cincinnati for his final year of eligibility, where he appeared in 19 games and averaged 5.8 points and 3.0 assists per game.

Most recently, Kriisa had been playing professional basketball in his native Estonia, and he had been announced as a participant for La Familia, the Kentucky-affiliated team competing in The Basketball Tournament, the annual summer bracket event broadcast on national television that draws alumni groups from major college basketball programs. Within hours of the arrest being reported, La Familia issued a statement on social media removing Kriisa from the tournament roster.

“We’re aware of the allegations regarding Kerr Kriisa. Kerr will not be competing with La Familia during the TBT Tournament. We will have no further comment,” La Familia said in their statement.

The FBI did not issue a public statement confirming the arrest or specifying charges as of Saturday afternoon. Kriisa’s attorney, if one has been retained, had not been publicly identified at the time of initial reporting. The FBI’s involvement, combined with the extradition to West Virginia and the federal nature of the case, suggests the alleged fraud scheme, whatever its specific contours, was investigated at the federal rather than state level, a designation typically reserved for cases involving wire fraud, bank fraud, securities fraud or other offenses with a federal jurisdictional hook.

The arrest adds another significant chapter to a college athletics landscape that has been grappling with increased scrutiny of the Name, Image and Likeness era and the financial arrangements that have accompanied the transfer portal’s explosion in activity since 2021. While the specific allegations against Kriisa have not been formally charged in public documents, the timing, linked to his 2023-24 season at West Virginia, places the alleged conduct squarely within the period when NIL collectives and pay-for-play arrangements were proliferating rapidly across college sports.

The case is expected to move forward with a federal court hearing in West Virginia in the coming week, at which point charging documents may become publicly available and provide the first clear picture of exactly what federal investigators allege Kriisa did and who else may be connected to the purported scheme. Until then, Kriisa remains held in Lexington without bail, awaiting extradition proceedings as the college basketball world follows developments in one of the most striking off-court stories of the summer offseason.