More than 30 people, including Miami Heat player Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, have been arrested as part of an investigation into alleged betting fraud in the NBA.
It’s been claimed that a number of individuals with direct links to America’s leading basketball league are guilty of selling inside information to gambling syndicates.
This info was then used to plunder significant profits from sportsbooks, it’s alleged.
The Ring
The case, led initially by federal investigators and since joined by the FBI, infers that a significant and coordinated gambling scam has been unfolding in the NBA since 2023.
Alarm bells were raised when suspicious betting patterns were identified by bookmakers around Rozier, who was accused of feigning injury in a game between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans back in 2023 so that punters backing him on the ‘unders’ side of prop bets could profit.
Reports suggest that one individual punter placed 30 bets involving Rozier in the space of just 46 minutes, which amounted to more than £10,000 in stakes. All 30 of the bets won, although the exact amount paid out is not known.
Initially, the NBA cleared Rozier of any wrongdoing. But he was arrested again on October 23, alongside Billups and dozens of others. It’s claimed that Billups provided information unknown to the public about his Trail Blazers team to a gambling syndicate in March 2023.
Both Rozier and Billups deny charges relating to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
It has been alleged that the sports betting ring, and a separate illegal poker network that saw games ‘rigged’, have links to some of the most feared Mafia families, including the Genovese and Gambino crime syndicates.
Meanwhile Damon Jones, the former Cleveland Cavaliers and Milwaukee Bucks player and coach, has been charged with providing gamblers with inside information on injuries suffered by NBA stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
The 49-year-old has denied all of the charges after appearing in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
Although further details are yet to emerge, the assistant director of the FBI’s New York office – Christopher Raia – claimed the fraudulent scheme cost innocent victims ‘tens of millions’ of dollars, while providing the city’s notorious crime families with a significant new revenue stream.
In a separate case last year, former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned for life after he played a part in a prop betting scam.
An NBA investigation concluded that Porter deliberately underperformed in games so that people known to him, including one big stakes punter that wagered £61,000 on the player to go ‘under’ his total points line, could profit.
In one of the investigated games, Porter left the court after just three minutes, citing ‘illness’. Bookmakers alerted the NBA to suspicious betting activity and none of the wagers were paid out.
Poker Faces
It has separately been alleged that Billups and Jones were used as ‘faces’ to attract poker players to games in which they could play against a host of former basketball stars and professional athletes.
Unbeknown to the invited players – but allegedly known by the athletes involved, the games were rigged… with Mafia gang members using high tech equipment to rob them of their money.
After the games held in Florida, Las Vegas and New York, La Cosa Nostra family members would take a rake of the money wagered… while also reportedly going after those players that were unable to settle their debts on the day.
According to attorneys launching the prosecution, the accused used modified shuffling machines, adapted contact lenses and even x-ray machines to swindle players out of more than £5 million.
The United States Attorney, Joseph Nocella Jr, revealed:
“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.
“They used off-the-shelf shuffling machines that had been secretly altered in order to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand and relay that information to an off-site operator.
“The off-side operator sent the information via cellphone back to a co-conspirator at the table, who was known as ‘the quarterback’, and they secretly signalled the information they had received to others at the table.”
The investigation, which the FBI has been undertaking since 2021, has yielded a series of related criminal cases, including one alleged incident in which a victim was robbed at gunpoint of the rigged card shuffling machine.
Jones has been released on bail since appearing in court, although the alleged Gambino crime syndicate member Anthony Ruggiero Jr had his request for a £3.8 million bond rejected.
Both cases continue…