FBI nabs dozens in alleged NBA gambling ring

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncy Billups outside federal court. — Chauncey Billups outside federal court

(Image credit: Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images)

What happened

The Justice Department Thursday announced the arrest of more than 30 people, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, as part of a sweeping multiyear investigation into gambling and sports-rigging schemes involving NBA players and New York mafia organizations.

Who said what

“This is the insider-trading saga for the NBA,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference in Brooklyn. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

Prosecutors accused Rozier and five codefendants of “exploiting private information about players to win bets on NBA games,” The Associated Press said, while Billups and 30 others were charged with swindling $7 million from participants in “high-stakes card games tied to La Cosa Nostra organized crime families.” Billups and other sports celebrities were the “bait” in these “fixed underground poker games,” The Wall Street Journal said. They would allegedly get a cut of the winnings when the game organizers “stacked the decks by using cheating technology straight out of a James Bond movie,” including “a rigged shuffling machine,” hidden cameras, “an X-ray table that could read cards” face down and “special contact lenses that could read marked cards.”

The indictments are “potentially the biggest hit to the NBA’s reputation” since a referee was busted for betting on games in 2007, and they arrived in the league’s “crucial” opening week, The New York Times said. But while the FBI “trumpeted the arrests as a major blow against organized crime,” the “sums of money involved were relatively small, and the connection between the Mafia and the NBA was tenuous.” The alleged gains certainly “paled in comparison to the riches the athletes earned on the court,” the AP said.

What next?

Billups and Rozier, through their lawyers, denied the charges. The NBA put both men on leave and said it would continue cooperating with authorities. According to officials, the “investigation is continuing and could result in more charges against other players,” the Times said.

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.