Some pretty big current and former NBA players named, mafia crime families, plus high stakes poker games with rigged tables/chips/players.
Allegedly the poker games players lost $7m, probably some pretty pissed off rich guys waking up realizing they got scammed.
Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier have been arrested as part of a pair of wide-ranging investigations related to illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by the Mafia, authorities announced Thursday.
Billups and Rozier were among a total of 34 people arrested. The arrests were the result of a yearslong investigation covering 11 states and involving tens of millions of dollars, FBI director Kash Patel said. Patel and other law enforcement officials said the multiple charges involve four Mafia families and organized crime networks and "mind-boggling" amounts of fraud.
Rozier, who was arrested Thursday morning at a hotel in Orlando, Florida, is accused of participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information. The Heat lost their season opener to the Magic on Wednesday, when Rozier did not play due to a coach's decision.
According to the indictment, Rozier and other defendants "had access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches" that was likely to affect the outcome of games or players' performances and provided that information to other coconspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits.
U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella Jr. called it "one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States."
Billups, who was arrested in Oregon, is charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games that were backed by Mafia families, authorities said. The defendants are accused of using technology to steal millions from victims in the New York area, Nocella said.
Both Billups and Rozier are expected to make initial court appearances later Thursday in Oregon and Florida, respectively.
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Former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones was among those arrested Thursday. He allegedly provided inside information about NBA games to co-defendants who used it to place sports bets.
According to Nocella, six defendants are accused of their involvement in the sports betting case, while there are 31 defendants allegedly involved in the rigged poker games. Jones is one of three people allegedly involved in both cases, Nocella said.
Sportsbooks in multiple states flagged suspicious betting interest on Rozier's statistics ahead of a Charlotte Hornets-New Orleans Pelicans game on March 23, 2023. An unexpected surge of bets -- including 30 wagers in 46 minutes from a professional bettor totaling $13,759 -- came in on the under on Rozier's points, rebounds and assists, causing sportsbooks to halt betting on the veteran guard. Rozier, then with the Hornets, played just 10 minutes before leaving the game, citing a foot injury.
Rozier's attorney, Jim Trusty, previously told ESPN that his client met with NBA and FBI officials multiple times in 2023. The NBA said it looked into the matter at the time and did not find that any league rules were broken.
Billups has served as the Trail Blazers' coach since 2021 and was on the sideline for their season-opening loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. He is an NBA champion and Finals MVP as a player with the Detroit Pistons, and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024. Billups signed a multiyear contract extension with the Trail Blazers in April.
Rozier, 31, is in the final season of a four-year, $96.3 million contract he signed with the Hornets in August 2021. The March 23, 2023, game was Rozier's last of the 2022-23 season with the Hornets, who traded him to the Heat in January 2024.
His case is connected to the betting scandal involving former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter, who was banned from the NBA in the spring of 2024 for his role in a gambling scheme around player prop bets. Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted in court to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season. He is awaiting sentencing in December.
Four men, including Porter, have pleaded guilty in the case. Two other men have been named as conspirators and have been in plea negotiations, according to court filings.
Jones, 49, played for 10 NBA teams over an 11-year career from 1998 to 2009 and was a Cavaliers assistant from 2016 to 2018.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver, appearing on "The Pat McAfee Show" on Tuesday, said the league has been working with its sportsbook partners to combat attempts at manipulation.
"We've asked some of our partners to pull back some of the prop bets, especially when they're on two-way players, guys who don't have the same stake in the competition, where it's too easy to manipulate something, which seems otherwise small and inconsequential to the overall score," Silver said. "We're trying to put in place -- learning as we go and working with the betting companies -- some additional control to prevent some of that manipulation."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Wow, this sucks. But overall, I'm of the mind that if you are betting on sports, you are taking some stupid risks anyway and of all the crimes that law enforcement should be focusing on, this is pretty low on the priority scale. $7M over 3-4 years? That's less than 5 minutes of insider trading, or other consumer crime being perpetrated on the American public............
Same day CZ gets a pardon
Ex mobster Michael Francese in one of his YT videos talked about how easy it was to corrupt young basketball players. Give em some money, some girls, then blackmail them so they keep throwing games.
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Huh? Millions of dollars stolen is not enough for police work?
Why would the players, coaches, former players get involved in this crap. The fact that you already make $10M / year should help distance them from this stupidity. WTF…?
Any theft, even through deception like this, is shitty. What I’m saying, though, is that the $7M over several years is pretty small potatoes compared to the theft perpetrated by our financial institutions and other white collar criminals.
It’s gotta be Trump’s fault, right? 😂
Only a few apartment buildings taken over by tren de agua in Aurora Colorado.
Only a few blocks of property destruction in downtown Los Angeles.
Only 4000 or so homicides in Chicago under JB Pritzker's watch.
Just look away. Nothing to see here.
They had to do something to give Krackpot Kash a moment to shine. He’s fucked up everything else lol.
"Athletes are easy prey" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k5lLnue7hA This is gold!...Go to about the 14 minute mark where Michael really gets going on how it works. 😃
Michael really reverted back into mob character in this one. Had me a bit frightened 😲
Why do you hate non whites?
I call him krackpot kash because his eyes always look cracked out. Not because he’s non white.
Sounds pretty racist to me.
Sounds good. Have a great day.
dude, grow up.
In other news, people still watch the NBA?
This is what I’m talking about @McG194 Kash is a dipshit. They arrest people for crimes unless it’s tied to Epstein. Then you puff your chest up as a shit podcaster/iinfluencer prior to being fbi director and then you are busier than a cat covering shit claiming there’s no one to prosecute. Thats called lying. Liars are pieces of shit regardless of which color their skin is. But yes I’m racist because his skin is brown and his eyes are bugged out 24/7. Just watch the dude some time. He ain’t far off from coke head Zelensky.
I’ll remind you that I voted for this president three times. This time around I think he’s making some terrible America last moves. How many billion to Argentina? How’s Appalachia doing after hurricane helene? How about the flooded area of Texas? Wildfire victims in Cali getting fucked over by the insurance companies? The same insurance companies that all of Congress and senate are investors/shareholders of. Hawaii as well. Now Trump tells the ranchers to lower their prices? What a moron. Ranchers been getting their asses whooped for a long time. I have no problem paying what beef is at right now. Long off topic rant but it’s all tied together.
They certainly ain't loosing money lol
The WMBA on the other hand..
Pit Row
I guess I missed the part where the organized crime bosses were arrested, too?
I haven't seen names mentioned, but they have also indicted 13 members of the "mob" in connection with this case.
"When US officials unveiled two staggering illegal sports betting investigations on Thursday, they described the operations as something "reminiscent of a Hollywood movie".
One of the schemes, which allegedly involved NBA figures, specialised contact lenses, marked cards, an x-ray table and $7m (£5.2m) in losses, led to the arrest of 31 people across 11 states, including members of the American-Sicilian mafia operation La Cosa Nostra."
The reaction I am seeing seems to be that nobody really gives a fuck about overpaid athletes and gambling.
I missed that...should have read the whole article.
Here’s an interesting take from Jason Whitlock:
https://youtu.be/gwOGvbY3g7Q
Sounds like this might have a lot more people involved, if some people start making deals to stay out of jail and implicate others it could get really ugly.
Wouldn't be surprised to see the scandal spreading into the NFL/MLB/NHL as more info comes out and people start connecting the dots.
And the poker game scam, really has nothing to do with the sports gambling scam, other than Billups is an NBA coach implicated in assisting the poker game scam. But I wonder if the FBI was following leads in one of these investigations, which led them to the other? Otherwise they really are not directly connected, unless there is more info that is not yet public.
😂
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