Topline
Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA player Damon Jones were among more than 30 people arrested separately Thursday morning as part of a multi-year federal investigation into two illegal gambling schemes, FBI Director Kash Patel said Thursday.
Head coach Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers on April 9, 2025.
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Key Facts
A joint investigation by the FBI, NYPD, Homeland Security Investigations and other law enforcement agencies led to arrests in 11 states into, connected to what Patel called a “wide sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra,” referencing the Italian American Mafia.
The arrests were connected to two different indictments, one focused on accusations of illegal sports betting on insider NBA information and one involving allegedly rigged poker games run by the Mafia.
Six people, including Rozier and Jones, were arrested in connection with the alleged insider sports betting conspiracy that U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella called “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes” since the legalization of online sports betting.
Nocella said insider information was used to place illegal bets on players across multiple teams, including the Charlotte Hornets, Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, which Nocella mistakenly referred to as the “Toronto Rangers” in a press conference.
The second indictment, which charged Jones and Billups, among more than two dozen others, accuses defendants of helping to run rigged poker games in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Miami and Las Vegas to benefit the Mafia.
The defendants have been charged with illegal gambling, extortion and money laundering, among other crimes.
Rozier and Billups have been placed on immediate leave from their teams, the NBA said Thursday, adding “We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”
James Trusty, attorney for Rozier, said the NBA player is “not a gambler” and slammed the FBI for arresting him in public: “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.”
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Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat on Jan. 19, 2025.
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What To Know About The Sports Betting Scheme
Nocella alleged Rozier, Jones and others used inside, non-public information to place hundreds of thousands of dollars in prop bets, mostly on individual player performances, from December 2022 to March 2024. The information included when specific players would be sitting out of future games, or when they would “pull themselves out early.” In one case, when Rozier was playing for the Charlotte Hornets, he allegedly told a co-conspirator he would be leaving the game early with an injury. Others were then able to place wagers that made thousands of dollars, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Those involved in the alleged scheme used information provided by Rozier, Jones and others to inform the bets, many of which were placed by proxies or straw bettors and most of which were successful. The scheme was linked to the one that resulted in Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter being banned from the NBA for life, and Nocella said those running the most recent scheme threatened Porter on at least one occasion to provide more insider information by leveraging his existing gambling debts. Those arrested have been charged with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
What We Don’t Know
Who all was involved in the sports betting scheme. There are nine unnamed co-conspirators, according to the indictment.
Where Were The Illegal Sports Bets Placed?
Both online and in casinos, Nocella said. The fraudulent bets were placed at four different sportsbooks, officials said, but they were not identified by name in the indictment. Law enforcement officials said the sportsbooks were victims of the scheme. DraftKings, the second largest U.S. sportsbook and a partner of the NBA, said Thursday it takes seriously the “responsibility of reporting suspicious activity.”
What To Know About The Rigged Poker Games
The second scheme, which Billups was allegedly involved with and also included Jones, charges more than 30 people with crimes connected to running rigged poker games across the U.S. Nocella said unwitting players were lured to games by the promise of playing with former professional athletes and then scammed out of millions of dollars through the use of “high tech cheating technology” that included rigged card shufflers and cameras hidden in tables. The poker scheme included members of the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families, Tisch said, adding that “bringing four of the five families together in a single indictment is extraordinarily rare.”
Chief Critic
Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., who has co-sponsored a bill to standardize parts of the sports betting industry, Thursday called the schemes “an inevitable consequence of the unchecked explosion of the sports betting industry.”
Key Background
This is not the first time an athlete has been associated with criminal activity since sports betting was legalized in 2018. Porter was given a lifetime ban from the NBA last year after it was revealed he bet on NBA games and provided insider information on his heath to other gamblers while playing for the Raptors. Porter would use an associate’s account to place bets on himself and then manipulate the outcome, an investigation found. The NBA earlier this year said it had investigated Rozier after being notified about unusual betting activity, but the league said it “did not find a violation of NBA rules.” NFL defensive back Josh Shaw was suspended in 2019 for betting against his own team, the Arizona Cardinals, at a sportsbook in Las Vegas. A New York Jets coach, Miles Austin, was suspended for violating the NFL’s gambling policy in 2022 and five NFL players were suspended in 2023 for mobile betting.