The Latest: NBA coaches and player charged in sports betting and Mafia-backed poker schemes

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Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former Cleveland Cavaliers assistant Damon Jones are among 34 people charged in connection with schemes involving illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by the Mafia, authorities said on Thursday.

Rozier is accused in participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information, officials said. Billups is charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games, authorities said.

FBI Director Kash Patel and other law enforcement officials said the multiple charges involve four of the five leading mafia families and organized crime networks, and “mind-boggling” amounts of fraud. Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, accused the FBI of aiming for “misplaced glory” by embarrassing the professional athlete with a perp walk, rather than allowing him to self-surrender.

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There are an array of ways that gambling can be rigged, some of them old-fashioned, some more high-tech.

Advanced technology with a shuffling machine could determine the exact order of cards after a shuffle, and who was holding what once they were dealt. That information is then transmitted wirelessly to someone off-site, who sends the identity of the player with the winning hand to the phone of a player at the table, known as “the quarterback.”

Then it got low-tech. The “quarterback” would use classic subtle signals like touching certain chips to pass the information to the fellow cheaters.

They’d all bet accordingly.

Other techniques: an X-ray table that could identify the face-down cards used in Texas Hold ‘em from underneath; hidden cameras built into the trays that hold players’ chips that could identify cards; and customized contact lenses and glasses that can detect special marks on cards.

▶ Read more about how gambling can be rigged

Roughly 20 of the defendants — from alleged high-ranking mobsters to money launderers — appeared in Brooklyn federal court late Thursday. Most pleaded not guilty during packed court hearings attended by family members.

Many of those charged with violent crimes or with lengthy criminal records and ties to organized crime were detained.

Others, including some of the poker players who participated in the rigged games, were released on bond.

Rozier’s attorney told reporters outside the federal courthouse after Thursday’s hearing about the March 23, 2023, game between Charlotte and New Orleans that was the focus of the charges. The NBA star played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds in the first quarter before exiting and did not play again in that game or the final eight games of the season.

Some bettors were furious with sportsbooks, posting on social media that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving Rozier’s stats for that night.

Trusty said that Rozier had confided in several people that he was injured that night.

“He’s like, ‘Why am I going to make this injury worse? I shouldn’t be playing,’” Trusty said.

Rozier was interviewed twice during an NBA investigation, and officials downloaded his phone, Trusty said.

“And at the end of the day, they said, ‘There’s nothing to see here,’ and cleared him,” Trusty said. “And that was a very professional investigation. It wasn’t something that was perfunctory.”

Billups made his first federal court appearance in Portland on Thursday afternoon, wearing a brown hooded sweatshirt as he sat next to his attorney before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie Russo.

Lawyers from both sides told the judge they have agreed on Billups’ release from custody pending trial on certain conditions.

Under the release conditions, Billups must secure “a substantial bond” with the court in the Eastern District of New York, where the case was filed; abide by certain travel restrictions; and surrender his passport, among others. He is also prohibited from gambling related activity. The dollar amount of the bond was not discussed during the court hearing.

Billups’ attorney, Chris Heywood, declined to comment after the hearing.

Trusty, Rozier’s attorney, described what he said was “chicanery” of prosecutors and federal agents. The defense attorney said he got a predawn call saying that federal agents were downstairs at Rozier’s hotel in downtown Orlando and that the attorney should call his client to tell him to go downstairs.

Within minutes, federal agents were at the door to Rozier’s hotel room, Trusty told the judge.

“It has had a damaging effect on his career,” Trusty said.

Another condition of Rozier’s release is that he can have no contact with any others named in the indictment, as well as any listed individuals the government provides.

A federal magistrate judge said Thursday that Rozier could be released from custody by putting up his Florida home as bond and surrendering his passport. U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Norway also restricted Rozier’s travel to the continental United States and prohibited him from gambling as conditions for his release.

Federal prosecutors had asked for a $10 million bond but Rozier’s attorney said that was excessive given that the NBA star had no prior record.

“I think it’s Draconian,” said Jim Trusty, Rozier’s attorney. “He is a man of high character.”

In court, Rozier wore a black Charlotte Hornets sweatshirt with green lettering and was shackled and handcuffed. He didn’t speak much except when answering basic questions from the judge.

Rozier is facing two counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane Hu. Each count carries no more than 20 years in prison.

Assistant coach and former NBA player Tiago Splitter has been named as the team’s interim head coach, according to a statement released Thursday by the Portland Trail Blazers.

“We are aware of the allegations involving head coach Chauncey Billups, and the Trail Blazers are fully cooperating with the investigation. Billups has been placed on immediate leave, and Tiago Splitter will assume head coaching duties in the interim. Any further questions should be directed to the NBA,” the brief statement said.

The six defendants in the sports betting indictment include former NBA player and coach Damon Jones, current NBA player Terry Rozier, one of Rozier’s close friends. Two of the defendants portrayed themselves on Instagram as successful sports bettors and sold sports betting picks through their profiles, according to the indictment.

Jones is also a defendant in the rigged poker game indictment, as is Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups.

The 31 defendants named in the second indictment include 12 people who are identified as either members or associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese or Lucchese Crime Families.

The Portland Trail Blazers canceled their scheduled practice on Thursday.

The team is set to play its first game without head coach Chauncey Billups on Friday night at Portland’s Moda Center against the Golden State Warriors.

The indictments contain the description of several unnamed NBA players whose injury status and availability for certain games were the source of betting activity. Those players are not accused of any wrongdoing and there is no indication that they would have even known what was being said about their status for those games.

Those players include LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard. Their identities are clear based on a review of corresponding injury reports surrounding games mentioned in the indictment.

The indictments show that certain defendants shared information about the availability of those players in games on March 24, 2023, involving the Portland Trail Blazers, and two in 2023 and 2024 involving the Los Angeles Lakers.

For the Portland game, defendant Eric Earnest, investigators said, was given information that a player who had been listed as probable and then questionable to play that day would not play at all. Those details perfectly match how Lillard was listed on injury reports that day.Similar patterns were found with Lakers games involving James and Davis, with Jones alleged to have shared their injury information before it was publicly known. In one of the cases, investigators said, Jones got the details wrong and caused some bettors who placed large wagers to lose.

Federal prosecutors asked a judge to detain 13 defendants pending trial, including six reputed crime family members, and to not release other defendants unless they post substantial bonds.

“The Court should consider that each of those defendants has taken a lifetime oath to commit crimes and put their crime families above all else,” prosecutors said about the alleged mob associates in a court filing. “Those crime families have a long history of committing crimes, including obstruction of justice.”

Court documents also describe a violent encounter in 2023 at a poker game in Manhattan run by a Gambino crime family associate. Two members of rival crime families that had a poker game in another location on the same night busted into the Gambino associate’s game armed with a gun and baton, sparked a brawl and assaulted the Gambino member, the documents say.

Court documents say proceeds from the rigged card games were laundered through shell companies and cryptocurrency.

FanDuel, one of the largest sportsbooks, released a statement expressing its concern over Thursday’s developments.

“Today’s events are deeply disturbing, and should concern fans, athletes, and everyone who loves sports and values integrity and fair play,” the company said. “They also illustrate the stark contrast between legal and illegal betting markets. At FanDuel, we use advanced technology and real-time monitoring to identify suspicious activity and work closely with leagues, data monitoring groups, and law enforcement. We are unwavering in our commitment to rooting out abuses by those who seek to undermine fair competition and the games we love.”

The National Basketball Players Association said it would do all it can to protect the league’s players, including Rozier.

“The integrity of the game is paramount to NBA players, but so is the presumption of innocence, and both are hindered when player popularity is misused to gain attention,” the union said. “We will ensure our members are protected and afforded their due process rights through this process.“

Betting scandals have been a concern for professional sports leagues for as long as they’ve existed, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May 2018 has led to a wave of gambling incidents involving athletes and officials.

The ruling struck down a federal law that barred sports betting in most states and opened the doors for online sportsbooks to take up a prominent space in the sports ecosystem.

▶ Here is a lineup of betting scandals involving pro sports

As legalized sports betting expands, recent polling suggests Americans are increasingly critical of its role in U.S. society and sports — although they’re more tolerant of it for professional sports.

Betting scandals have multiplied since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May 2018 struck down a federal law that barred sports betting in most states. Waves of cases have involved athletes and officials — including those arrested Thursday.

In the years since the Supreme Court’s ruling, sports betting has brought revenue to state governments, but it’s also prompted concerns about the potential for wrongdoing, as well as the impact on athletes.

▶ Read about what polls suggest Americans think about the impact of legal sports betting

The indictments unsealed in New York create a massive cloud for the NBA — which opened its season this week — and show how certain types of wagers are vulnerable to massive fraud in the growing, multi-billion-dollar legal sports-betting industry.

“We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation,” FBI Director Kash Patel said. “This is the insider trader saga of the NBA — that’s why we are going to take heat for this.”

Jones is accused in both indictments announced Thursday — of participating in rigged poker games as well as an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information.

Messages were left Thursday at a phone number and email address listed in public records for Jones.

Jones, 49, has been coaching since at least 2014 after an 11-year NBA playing career. He was an unofficial assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers in 2022-23 when he allegedly was involved with the sports betting scheme, according to the indictment.

Jones is from Galveston, Texas, and played for Houston in college before suiting up in New Jersey, Boston, Golden State, Dallas, Vancouver, Detroit, Sacramento, Milwaukee, Miami and Cleveland. He also worked as a TV analyst for ESPN in 2018.

Authorities say Jones was coached — in real time — about how to play his hands during the poker games, and that at one point, he snapped back, saying: “Y’all know I know what I’m doing!! Let me hibachi like Gilbert Arenas.”

The detention memo says Billups and Damon Jones, a former NBA player, served as “face cards” in the scheme, luring victims drawn by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes. Others were charged with supplying the cheating technology, or arranging the underground games and bringing in the “fish” as well as big-money players known as “whales.”

Text messages between the defendants as they carried out their scheme show that in one such game in Las Vegas on April 2019, Billups was winning so many improbable hands with the help of a rigged shuffling machine that his overseers said he needed to lose on purpose, to avoid being suspected of cheating.

Following another rigged game in October 2020, Billups was wired $50,000 for his participation, the memo states.

The memo notes that the rigged poker scheme began as early as 2019 and involved locations across the US, including the Hamptons, Manhattan, Las Vegas, and Miami.

The memo describes sophisticated technology such as card shuffling machines that had been secretly altered to incorporate concealed technology that could read the cards in the deck, predict which players at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information to offsite operators in other states.

Prosecutors say in the memo that defendants also used other cheating technology, including a poker chip tray analyzer, which secretly read cards using hidden cameras, an X-ray device that could read cards as they were kept face down on the table, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards.

Prosecutors, in their detention memo, asked a judge to impose “substantial bail conditions” before releasing all the defendants in the poker rigging case, including a prohibition on any form of gambling, travel restrictions, surrendering their passport, and prohibiting the transfer of assets valued at or greater than $10,000 without the permission of the court.

For Billups, they noted that he has “substantial financial resources.”

“As an NBA player from 1997 to 2013, his lifetime career earnings exceeded $100 million, and he currently has a multi year contract to serve as the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers for an undisclosed salary,” the memo reads.

Nocella said the scheme targeted victims known as “fish,” who were lured to participate in the rigged games with the chance to play alongside former athletes who were known as “face cards.” Billups was one of those celebrities, Nocella said.

The games were rigged through sophisticated cheating technology, such as altered card shuffling machines, hidden cameras in poker chip trays, special sunglasses and even X-ray equipment built into the table to read the cards of unsuspecting players.

And once the “fish” lost, the mafia used extortion and violence to make sure they paid their gambling debts, Nocella said.

Organizers brought in well-known former and current players and coaches to appear legitimate and used hidden cameras, bar-coded decks and shuffling machines that could read the order of cards, Tisch said.

“Victims believed that they were sitting at a fair table,” she said. “Instead, they were cheated out of millions.”

Losses exceed $7 million and continue to grow, with one victim losing $1.8 million, Tisch said. When people refused to pay, the defendants used threats, intimidation, and violence, she said.

Investigators found that the scheme involved members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the news conference.

“Bringing four of the five families together in a single indictment is extraordinarily rare,” Tisch said. “It reflects how deep and how far this investigation reached and the skill and the persistence it took to get here.”

She said they used “traditional mob enforcement methods, combined with new technology to expand the reach of their operations.”

The Miami Heat hasn’t commented either on Rozier’s arrest.

Separately, National Hockey League spokesman John Dellapina said the NHL has not been contacted by the FBI and is not aware of any of its employees being implicated in the federal investigation.

In the sports betting scheme, players sometimes altered their performance or took themselves out of games early, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

In one instance, Rozier while playing for the Hornets told other he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers that raked in thousands of dollars, Tisch said.

Posts still online from March 23, 2023 show that some bettors were furious with sportsbooks that evening when it became evident that Rozier was not going to return to the Charlotte-New Orleans game after the first quarter, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

A prop is a type of wager that allows gamblers to bet on whether a player will exceed a certain statistical number, such as whether the player will finish over or under a certain total of points, rebounds, assists and more.

The NBA has expressed concerns about prop bets, and other sports have also openly worried about the potential for manipulation. Such bets — and bettors losing on them — have also exposed athletes to often hateful criticism from both fans in arenas and online.

The exact charge or charges Rozier faces haven’t been made public. FBI Director Kash Patel and other law enforcement officials were expected to provide more information at a news conference in Brooklyn on Thursday.

But this case was brought by the same U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn that previously prosecuted ex-NBA player Jontay Porter, whose sentencing is set for Dec. 10. The former Toronto Raptors center pleaded guilty to charges that he withdrew early from games, claiming illness or injury, so that those in the know could win big with “prop bets” — wagering that he would underperform expectations.