A string of legendary NBA stars, including Hall-of-Famer Chauncey Billups, have been arrested by the FBI for their participation in a gambling racket that involved at least four of New York’s mafia families.
Unsealed legal filings show that the operation dated back to at least 2019 and lasted more than five years, with no less than 31 individuals coming under federal scrutiny.
Highlights
- FBI arrests NBA legends Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier in a gambling ring linked to the mafia.
- Prosecutors say players acted as “face cards” to lure wealthy victims into rigged poker games.
- Investigators seized cheating devices, including X-ray tables, marked glasses, and rigged shufflers.
More recently, on October 23, high-profile NBA figures such as Billups -- who, until that date, was the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach -- Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and Damon Jones of the Cleveland Cavaliers were arrested.
Officials also seized an X-ray table that could read unsuspecting punters’ cards while they are face down, a rigged card shuffler, remote technology that sends in-game information to off-site locations, and special glasses capable of helping criminals determine the markings on cards that were facedown.
Chauncey Billups is accused of luring innocents into card games that saw them unfairly relieved of their money
Image credits: Steph Chambers/Getty Images
Billups, 49, is reported to have been apprehended in the early morning in Portland.
Notably, his arrest came hours after his team lost to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
While there has been no official connection made between Billups' alleged criminal activities and the loss, he has been accused of partaking in illegal poker matches in Manhattan, Miami, Las Vegas, and the Hamptons, alongside Damon Jones, who has also been arrested.
According to authorities, the two filled the roles of “face card” celebrities who were used to lure in well-heeled civilian players.
Damon Jones leaked information about former teammate LeBron James’s injury to bookmakers
Image credits: Tomas Diniz Santos/Getty Images
According to the indictment by the District of New York’s Department of Justice, Jones, along with Rozier, passed information from “coaches and players,” including critical intel about one of Lebron James’s injuries in 2023, to bookmakers.
Jones played alongside James for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
He has also been indicted in the gambling racket in which police have seized a string of nefarious contraptions.
Joseph Nocella, U.S. Attorney for New York’s Eastern District, elaborated on said gambling racket, explaining that in some games, everyone, including the dealers and “face cards” like Jones and Rozier, would conspire against other gamblers.
Victims would unwittingly enter games where everyone was conspiring against them
Image credits: Keith Allison/Wikimedia
“What the victims – the fish – didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam,” Nocella elaborated.
“Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.”
Nocella indicated that odds were stacked against the racket’s victims in the most literal sense and in almost every way possible.
Image credits: Steph Chambers/Getty Images
“The defendants used a variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies, some of which were provided by other defendants in exchange for a share of the profits from the scheme,” he continued.
Law enforcement officials recovered an X-ray table used to spy on punters’ cards
Nocella went on to say that off-the-shelf shufflers were bought and altered so that they could analyze cards in the deck and then give information on which players had favorable hands, then send the information to an off-site entity.
This information would then be returned to conspirators at the table known as “quarterbacks.”
“The quarterback then signaled secretly the information he had received from others to others at the table, and together, they used that information in order to win their games and to cheat the victims,” Nocella elaborated.
The U.S. attorney named other “cheating technologies” like “poker chip tray analyzers” with hidden cameras, “special contact lenses or eyeglasses” that would single out “pre-marked cards”, and an “X-ray table” that read cards while they lay face down.
The NBA players were working with America’s top five mafia families
Image credits: CBS News
While it is unknown exactly how or when these high-earning NBA players started preying on others, they did not act alone.
Billups, Rozier, and Jones were part of a bigger machine that has been New York’s Achilles heel since the late 19th century.
The New York Police Commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch, confirmed this when she told reporters:
“These operatives included capos and multiple soldiers from the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families,” CNN reported her saying.
“These operatives included capos and multiple soldiers from the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families,” CNN reported her saying.
The NBA has since weighed in, distancing itself from the embarrassed players
Rozier, who has been playing in the NBA for a decade, was arrested in Orlando, Florida, after being tracked by the FBI for months, while Billups’ employer, the Portland Trail Blazers, has released a statement indicating that he has been placed on administrative leave, per Hoops Rumors.
The NBA has also weighed in, saying that Rozier and Billups “are being placed on immediate leave from their teams, and we will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities.”
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