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OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys

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  1. hard to make anyone care about that when we're all getting rich in the market.
  2. Looks like HOFer is going to jail. Illegal betting on fixed poker matches and NBA games. Dealing with every family that makes you go 🤌. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10/23/nyregion/nba-illegal-gambling-arrests Here’s the latest. Indictments against current and former N.B.A. players, including a well-known head coach who had a hall of fame playing career, were unsealed on Thursday, in a pair of criminal cases that involved the coordination of Mafia families and professional athletes. The charges were unveiled at a news conference in Brooklyn, where Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., called the scale of the fraud “mind-boggling,” adding that the schemes involved “tens of millions of dollars” in theft, fraud and robbery. The investigation has been developing for years, coordinated by the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department’s Joint Organized Crime Task Force. But it exploded into public on Thursday morning when Terry Rozier, a guard for the Miami Heat, was arrested in Orlando, Fla., and Chauncey Billups, the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and a former star for the Detroit Pistons, was arrested in Portland, Ore. Mr. Rozier was involved in a sports betting scheme in which the defendants used nonpublic information about N.B.A. athletes and teams to set up fraudulent bets, said Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. For example, the defendants knew when players would be sitting out or leaving a game early, allowing them to set up the fraudulent bets. Mr. Rozier left one game early and let other gamblers know so that they could bet on the game and make hundreds of thousands of dollars that they later split with him, said Jessica Tisch, the commissioner of the New York Police Department. Mr. Billups, who was inducted into the basketball hall of fame last year, and another former N.B.A. player and coach, Damon Jones, participated in the other scheme, involving rigged illegal poker games that were set up by organized crime families — the Bonano, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese families — who would take cuts of the profits and use force to go after debtors, Mr. Nocella said. Officials said the investigation began four years ago. Victims were cheated out of at least $7 million, officials said. Chelsia Rose Marcius and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting. A correction was made on Oct. 23, 2025 : An earlier version of this article misstated the status of legal charges against Jontay Porter in a gambling scheme. Porter was charged and pleaded guilty; it is not the case that he was not charged. Representative Paul Tonko, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that the alleged schemes revealed today were “an inevitable consequence of the unchecked explosion of the sports betting industry.” Tonko is a co-sponsor of federal legislation that would create nationwide standards for the sports betting industry that include advertising limits and affordability checks. “The constant, unfettered access to sports gambling destroys public trust in the game, while having dire consequences for countless across our nation struggling with problem gambling,” he said. The rigged poker games sanctioned by organized crime featured an elaborate high-tech scheme that involved “cheating teams” whose members worked together to beat the victims, according to one of the indictments. While the victims thought they were playing in a “straight” illegal card game game “gambling against other participants on equal footing,” in reality the defendants and their co-conspirators, who were the other players in the game, worked together on the teams. They used advanced wireless technologies to read the cards dealt in each hand and then pass that information to the defendants and co-conspirators. “This is the insider trading scandal for the N.B.A.,” Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, said. The alleged sports rigging operation will send shockwaves through the world of American professional sports, which has embraced and reaped the business opportunities from the rapid expansion of sports betting across the country. Today’s developments call to mind a warning from Bill Bradley, a former U.S. senator and New York Knicks star who was a driving force behind the 1992 law that effectively banned sports betting. “I just don’t think it will be controlled,” he said in 2024. “I think it will pervade the culture. I think there will be a scandal.” In addition to the sports betting schemes, one of the indictments accuses some of the defendants of operating rigged poker games at locations on Lexington Avenue and Washington Place in Manhattan. According to the indictment, the games were “on record” with, and run with, “the express permission and approval of, members and associates of certain organized crime families of La Cosa Nostra, who provided support and protection for the games and collected owed debts from the games in exchange for a portion of the illegal gambling proceeds.” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that the sports betting scheme involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent bets, involving a network of proxies or straw bettors, and that most of the allegedly fraudulent bets were successful. Nocella said that the sports betting scheme was focused on using non-public information about N.B.A. athletes and teams, such as when players would be sitting out or leaving a game early, to set up fraudulent bets. Most were prop bets, which are wagers on individual events or performances not linked to the outcome of a game. Those are easier to manipulate. Video Between December 2022 and March 2024, CreditCredit...Associated Press Oct. 23, 2025, 10:29 a.m. ET1 hour ago Jonah Bromwich New York criminal justice reporter Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney, is now describing the schemes in detail. He says that the Mafia — members of several different families — became involved in the rigged games that the defendants were already participating in because of their preexisting control of illegal poker games in New York City. Nocella says that other crimes stemmed from the scheme, including gunpoint robbery and extortion. Oct. 23, 2025, 10:23 a.m. ET1 hour ago Jonah Bromwich New York criminal justice reporter The indictments charge two different schemes — one a sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information, the other a nationwide scheme to rig poker games. The first includes six defendants, the other more than 30. Three individuals are charged in both indictments. Oct. 23, 2025, 10:22 a.m. ET1 hour ago William Rashbaum One indictment in the case lists 32 defendants, including the former N.B.A. player and coach Damon Jones and the Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, who are both charged with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the docket sheet in the case. Many of the other defendants also face those charges, along with counts accusing them of operating an illegal gambling enterprise and conspiracies to commit extortion and robbery. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Oct. 23, 2025, 10:19 a.m. ET1 hour ago Jonah Bromwich New York criminal justice reporter F.B.I. Director Kash Patel, in his opening remarks at the news conference, said that the two schemes enveloped both the N.B.A. and organized crime, and involved charges of wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and illegal gambling. Patel called the fraud “mind-boggling,” and said the schemes involved “tens of millions of dollars” in theft, fraud and robbery. Video CreditCredit...Associated Press Oct. 23, 2025, 10:17 a.m. ET2 hours ago Santul Nerkar Reporting from U.S. District Court in Brooklyn See more on: N.B.A., Federal Bureau of Investigation Share full article Related Content Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Site Index Site Information Navigation © 2025 The New York Times Company NYTCo Contact Us Accessibility Work with us Advertise T Brand Studio Privacy Policy Cookie Policy Terms of Service Terms of Sale Site Map Help Subscriptions Your Privacy Choices
  3. skyfall being played over sports highlights is awesome.
  4. ballistic market trajectories
  5. supervising a pregnancy - high risk and not - seems very very deadly. can we not just not supervise?
  6. i think that is something different. had to do with some dispute about forcing their president out and what not. they've said they're not in on the compact. White House Moves Toward Settlement With First Public University The Trump administration is closing in on a deal with the University of Virginia, four months after government pressure forced the school’s previous president to resign. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/us/politics/trump-virginia-university.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vU8.42rs.A7QxIvS3ZclE&smid=url-share
  7. worth clicking on to see one of them is tim snyder, the ukraine expert. (although now that i'm reading it, seems like a little clickbait-y. the snyder stuff is both old and not because of trump: Shore wrote that the Munk School had long attempted to recruit her and Snyder and that the couple had seriously considered the offers “for the past two years.” Shore wrote that the couple decided to take the positions after the November 2024 elections. However, a spokesperson for Snyder told Inside Higher Ed that Snyder’s decision was made before the elections, was largely personal and came amid “difficult family matters.” The spokesperson also said that he had “no desire” to leave the United States. end).
  8. I think the fact that we haven't signed it yet is starting to feel like a good sign.
  9. how on earth is that a crime? mere threats can't be a crime under the 1st amendment, right? doesn't it have to be paired with some sort of reasonably immediate ability to carry it out or something?
  10. bwahaha. this is what he responds to, exactly making the point.
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