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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.

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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

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Posted

The sophistication of card game cheating is incredible. I would never play against strangers for any substantial amount of money. Fuck that.

 

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