More than 30 people, including NBA head coach Chauncey Billups and player Terry Rozier, have been arrested as part of federal investigations into gambling and “sports rigging” operations linked to multiple major crime families, law enforcement leaders said Thursday.
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“We are here in New York to announce a historic arrest across a wide, sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference in Brooklyn, New York.
Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, Rozier of the Miami Heat, and former NBA player Damon Jones were “taken into custody today,” Patel said.
In a statement, the NBA said that Rozier 31, and Billups 49, “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,” the NBA said.
The arrests stem from two major fraud-related cases: one involving sports betting, and the other linked to “rigged poker games,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella said.
The latter indictment encompasses 31 defendants, including Billups, who allegedly “participated in a nationwide scheme” to rig the games using “high-tech cheating technology to steal millions of dollars from victims in underground poker games that were secretly fixed,” Nocella said.
That technology included poker chip tray analyzers and tampered shuffling machines that could send information about players’ hands to an off-site operator, the U.S. attorney said.
The defendants also used special glasses or contact lenses “that could read pre-marked cards, and an x-ray table that could read cards face down on the table,” he said.
Victims in the rigged games were known as “fish” who were at times “lured” by the chance to play alongside pro athletes, known as “face cards,” Nocella said.
But “everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam,” he said.
The games that took place in the New York area were backed by the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families, he said.
The other indictment centers on an insider sports betting conspiracy that Nocella described as “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”
That case involves six defendants, including Rozier. Jones is charged in both cases.
Former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was previously charged in the sports gambling scheme, Nocella said. Porter pleaded guilty in July 2024 to wire fraud conspiracy.
“This alleged illegal gambling operation hustled unwitting victims out of tens of millions of dollars, and created a financial pipeline for La Cosa Nostra to help fund and facilitate their organized criminal activity,” said FBI New York Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia.
Billups, a former player for the Detroit Pistons who spent 17 years in the NBA, was arrested in Portland, Oregon. A five-time All-Star, Billups was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024.
Rozier was arrested in Orlando, Florida.
Rozier, a 10-year NBA veteran, reportedly had been eyed for months over suspicious sports betting activity related to his play.
Billups was named NBA Finals Most Valuable Player in 2004 when the Pistons defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in the league’s finals.
Jones, 49, played for 10 teams, including three seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers, over a decade-plus NBA career.
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