(Nexstar) – State and federal authorities announced Thursday a sweeping investigation linking more than 30 people, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, to two gambling schemes linked to multiple Mafia families.
The schemes are divided into two major cases, one involving insider sports betting and the other involving rigged poker games, said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. Although the cases are separate, Nocella said there are three defendants who have been charged in both.
So what?
‘One of the most brazen sports corruption schemes’
First, sports betting.
Those accused of participating in the scheme allegedly shared inside information, such as when a player would sit out a future game or find a way to remove himself from the game, to bettors, who could place their prop bets accordingly.
The NBA players involved would alter their performance or take themselves out of games — for example by feigning injury or illness — to ensure that some of the bets involving them paid out heavily, officials said Thursday.
According to Nocella, most of those bets were prop bets. A prop bet focuses on a player’s statistics, such as how many points they will score in total, as opposed to other betting that depends on the outcome of one or more games (the latter would be considered a parlay, which requires you to make multiple bets to hit).
Among the games in which informed bettors reportedly made profits is a March 23, 2023 game in which Rozier, then a member of the Charlotte Hornets, left after playing less than 10 minutes and did not return. Other sports highlighted by the officials were:
- February 9, 2023: Los Angeles Lakers vs. Milwaukee Bucks
- March 24, 2023: Trail Blazers vs. Chicago Bulls
- April 6, 2023: Orlando Magic vs. Cleveland Cavaliers
- January 15, 2024: Lakers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder
- January 26, 2024: Toronto Raptors vs. Los Angeles Clippers
- March 20, 2024: Raptors vs. Sacramento Kings
Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting was widely legalized in the United States”, involving six defendants, including former NBA players Damon Jones and Rozier.
The indictment of Rozier and others says there are nine unnamed co-conspirators, including a Florida resident who was an NBA player, an Oregon resident who was an NBA player from 1997 to 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021, as well as a relative of Rozier.
Among the previously charged co-conspirators in the case is former NBA player Jontay Porter, who has already pleaded guilty to charges that he withdrew from games early, claiming illness or injury, so that people in the know could win big by betting on him to perform below expectations.
The information was obtained through the bookmakers’ connections to people in the NBA and, in at least one instance, Nocella said Porter’s alleged gambling debts were used to threaten him for details.
Nocella alleged during Thursday’s press conference that hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets were placed using this inside information. He said bets were placed in person at the casino and through online sports books – the latter of which was determined to be the victim in this case.
Rigid Machines, “Face Cards,” and Fish
Nocella said the defendants in the second case used rigged machines and other technology to run rigged poker games in the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Manhattan and Miami since early 2019.
In these games players, called “fish”, were invited to play with former professional athletes, called “face cards”. According to Nocella, the face cards featured Jones and Billups.
Nocella reported that other players at the table, face cards, and dealers knew that the game was rigged with the help of “very sophisticated cheating technologies”, while Fishes was unaware.
The shuffling machines were “secretly altered” so that they could read the cards and guess who would have the best hand at the table. That information was transmitted to someone off-site, who then informed someone at the table, called the “quarterback.” Armed with that information, the quarterback would secretly signal to others involved in the plan what they knew. This, Nocella explained, allowed players and face cards to win the game and deceive victims.
Other technologies allegedly used in the scheme include chip readers that can analyze cards, special contact lenses or glasses to pick up marked cards, and X-ray tables to read face-down cards.
Members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese organized crime families – three of the five main Mafia families operating in New York City – “already had control over non-rigged, illegal poker games around New York City,” Nocella explained, giving them a way to get involved in these rigged poker games.
More specifically, he said, those involved helped organize the games, took shares of the winnings, and “worked to enforce the collection of debts.” On at least one occasion, a victim was even held at gunpoint in order to obtain a rigged card shuffle machine.
The money won during the games – Nocella said tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars would be collected from fish per game – was reportedly looted.
Nocella said, “To the defendants who were arrested today, my message is this: Your winning streak is over. Your luck is over.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
