The head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and a player for the Miami Heat were arrested Thursday along with more than 30 other people in two criminal cases alleging sprawling separate schemes to rake in millions by rigging sports bets and poker games involving Mafia families, authorities said.
Portland coach Chauncey Billups, who was a player for the Toronto Raptors during the 1998-1999 season, was charged with participating in a conspiracy to fix high-stakes card games in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and the Hamptons that were backed by La Cosa Nostra Crime families. Heat guard Terry Rozier was accused in a second scheme to concoct fraudulent bets by exploiting confidential information about NBA athletes and teams.
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.
“My message to the defendants who’ve been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended,” said Joseph Nocella, the U.S attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “Your luck has run out.”
Billups and Rozier expected to make their first court appearances
Both men face money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy charges and were expected to make initial court appearances later Thursday. Also arrested was former NBA assistant coach and player Damon Jones, who is charged with participating in both schemes.
Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”
“The fraud is mind boggling,” FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters. “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation.”
Billups, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, and Rozier have been placed on leave from their teams, according to the NBA. The league said it is cooperating with authorities.
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“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the NBA said in a statement.
A message seeking comment was left Thursday morning with Billups. Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement that his client is “not a gambler” and “looks forward to winning this fight.” Trusty said the FBI had previously said his client was not a target in the probe.
But at 6 a.m. “they called to tell me FBI agents were trying to arrest him in a hotel,” Trusty said. ”It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self-surrender they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case.”
Mafia families profited off gambling scheme, officials say
The poker scheme cheated at least $7 million out of unsuspecting gamblers who were lured into rigged games with the chance to compete against former professional basketball players like Billups and Jones. The games were rigged using 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.
Once the targeted victims — known as “fish” — lost, the mafia used extortion and violence to make sure they paid their gambling debts, Nocella said.
The rigged poker scheme often made use of preexisting illegal poker games run by New York crime families that required them to share a portion of their proceeds with the Gambino, Genovese and Bonnano families, according to court papers. Members of those families, in turn, also helped commit violent acts, including assault, extortion and robbery, to ensure repayment of debts and the continued success of the operation, officials said in court documents.
Prosecutors, in their detention memo, asked a judge to detain Mafia members implicated in the case, as well as the ringleaders of the poker scheme. Prosecutors are arguing for releasing Billups and Jones but with “substantial bail conditions,” including a prohibition on any form of gambling and travel restrictions.
Athletes accused of leaving games early
In the sports betting scheme, players sometimes altered their performance or took themselves out of games early to rig prop bets — 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 or assists, according to the indictment.
In one instance, Rozier, while playing for the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, told people he was planning to leave the game early with a supposed injury, allowing gamblers to place wagers earning them tens of thousands of dollars, authorities say.
After another defendant collected his cut of the fraudulent scheme, the man drove to Rozier’s Charlotte home and they counted the cash, according to the indictment.
That game between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans raised eyebrows at the time. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of the game before leaving, citing a foot issue. He did not play again that season.
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 game after the first quarter, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had happened regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.
The indictment against Rozier lists nine unnamed co-conspirators, including a Florida resident who was an NBA player, 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.
The NBA had investigated Rozier previously. He was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic on Wednesday in Orlando, Florida, in the season opener for both teams, though he did not play in the game. He was taken into custody in Orlando early Thursday. The team did not immediately comment on the arrest.
