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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Former NBA assistant coach Damon Jones also arrested
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.
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.”
NBA suspends Rozier and Billups
The NBA issued the following statement:
“We are in the process of reviewing the federal indictments announced today. Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups are being placed on immediate leave from their teams, and we will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities. We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”
Billups was winning so much, he had to lose on purpose, prosecutors say
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.
Detention memo reveals more details of poker rigging
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 want poker rigging defendants to meet bail conditions
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.
‘Face cards’ were used to lure in the ‘fish’, authorities say
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.
Losses from the rigged poker games top $7 million — and counting, commissioner says
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.
New York’s formidable crime families were involved, police commissioner says
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 NBA, which had investigated Rozier previously, had no immediate comment
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.
Indictment cites a wide-ranging cast of ‘co-conspirators’
The indictment of Rozier and others says there are nine unnamed co-conspirators including a Florida resident who was an NBA player and an Oregon resident who was an NBA player from about 1997 to 2014 and an NBA coach since at least 2021, as well as a relative of Rozier.
Former NBA player Jontay Porter is named among “other relevant individuals” in the indictment.
Indictment explains how bettors allegedly used players
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 co-conspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits, the indictment says.
Police Commissioner: Faked injuries enabled sure bets
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.
The indictments are related to two major cases
One involves sports betting, the other rigged poker games. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said at the news conference that in the first case, six defendants are accused of participating in an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about NBA athletes and teams. He called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”
The second case involves 31 defendants in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games, Nocella said. The defendants include former professional athletes accused of using technology to steal millions from victims in underground poker games in the New York area that were backed by mafia families, he said.
Police Commissioner: Faked injuries enabled sure bets
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.
Billups was known as “Mr. Big Shot” as an NBA player
Billups played for Boston, Detroit, Toronto, Denver, Minnesota, the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers. He won the Joe Dumars Trophy, the NBA’s sportsmanship award, in 2009 while playing for his hometown Denver Nuggets.
Now 49, he’s in his fifth season as Portland’s coach, compiling a 117-212 record.
Billups signed a multi-year contract extension with the Trail Blazers this year
Billups was a five-time All-Star with an NBA playing career that spanned 17 seasons, including a championship with Detroit in 2004. He was inducted to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame last year.
The Blazers did not release terms of its coaching deal with Billups when it was announced in April. Portland missed out on the postseason for the fourth straight year under Billups, but they expressed confidence in the team’s future.
“The core of Chauncey’s leadership is his ability to build a collaborative culture and growth mindset for our young team,” Blazers chair Jody Allen said then in a statement.
“So much promise here. I’m pumped about it,” Billups said.
What is a ‘prop bet’ and why are they a concern?
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 FBI could be looking at ‘prop bets’
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.
Trying to get comment from lawyers for Rozier and Billups
Messages seeking comment were left Thursday morning with lawyers for Rozier and Billups.
Rozier’s attorney, Jim Trusty, previously told ESPN that Rozier met with NBA and FBI officials in 2023 and was told that an initial investigation determined he did nothing wrong, the sports network reported.
Rozier was arrested in Orlando early Thursday
Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic in Orlando Wednesday evening — though he did not play. Hours later, he was taken into custody in Orlando. The team didn’t immediately comment on his arrest.
By The Associated Press
