Billups

A National Basketball Association player and coach are among dozens of people charged in two investigations centred on illegal sports betting and mafia-linked poker games, the FBI has announced.

Miami Heat player Terry Rozier was among six people arrested over alleged betting irregularities, including other players who may have faked injuries.

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups is one of 31 people charged in a separate illegal poker game case involving former players and organised crime figures.

Rozier’s lawyer denied the allegations to CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, saying: “Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”

In a statement, the NBA said that Rozier and Billups are being placed on immediate leave, as the association is reviewing the federal indictments.

“We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the statement read.

US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Joseph Nocella Jr, said all defendants are innocent until proven guilty, but warned: “Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out.”

FBI Director Kash Patel called the arrests “extraordinary” and said there was a “coordinated takedown across 11 states”.

Prosecutors said the first case involved players and associates who allegedly used insider information to manipulate bets on major platforms.

Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalised”.

Seven NBA games between February 2023 and March 2024 have been identified as part of the case. Rozier is said to have been involved in one between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans, when he was playing for the Hornets.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that on 23 March 2023, Rozier allegedly let others close to him know that he planned to leave a game early with a supposed injury.

Using that information, conspirators allegedly placed bets that paid out tens of thousands of dollars in profits, she said.

During the game, Rozier played roughly nine minutes and scored just five points because of a sore right foot, according to the official NBA match report.

Before that game, he averaged 35 minutes of playing time and about 21 points per game.

“As the NBA season tips off, his career is already benched, not for injury but for integrity,” Tisch said.

Rozier’s lawyer James Trusty said in a statement that prosecutors “appear to be taking the word of spectacularly in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case.”

Trusty said he had been representing Rozier for more than a year and said prosecutors characterised Rozier as a subject, not a target, until they informed him FBI agents were arresting the player on Thursday morning.

Former NBA player Damon Jones was also arrested.

Jones is said to have been involved in two of the identified games – when the Los Angeles Lakers met the Milwaukee Bucks in February 2023, and a January 2024 game between the Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder.

The second case involves 31 defendants alleged to have participated in a scheme to rig illegal poker games and steal millions of dollars, backed by crime families.

The case involved 13 members and associates of the Bonanno, Genovese and Gambino crime families.

Nocella said the targeted victims were lured to play in games with former professional athletes, including Billups and Jones, in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and the Hamptons.

Victims were “fleeced” out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, he said.

He said defendants used “very sophisticated technology” like altered off-the-shelf shuffling machines that could read the cards. Some of the defendants used special contact lenses and eye glasses to read pre-marked cards, and an X-ray table that could read cards when they were face-down, he added.

Tisch said when people refused to pay, the organised crime families used threats and intimidation to get people to hand over the money.

The charges include robbery, extortion, wire fraud, bank fraud and illegal gambling.

The conspiracy cheated victims out of $7m (£5.2m), with one losing $1.8 million, officials said.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” Christopher Raia, the FBI assistant director of the New York field office, said, adding the FBI is working day and night to ensure members of mafia families “cannot continue to wreak havoc in our communities”.

NEW YORK — Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier are among more than 30 people charged in connection with schemes involving illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by Mafia, authorities said on Thursday.

Rozier is accused in participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information, officials said. Billups is charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games that were backed by Mafia families, authorities said.

The indictments are related to two major cases, one involving sports betting and the second involving rigged poker games, U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said at a news conference with FBI Director Kash Patel. In the first case, six defendants are accused of participating in an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about NBA athletes and teams, Nocella said. He called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.”

The second case involves 31 defendants in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games, Nocella said. The defendants include former professional athletes accused of using technology to steal millions of dollars from victims in underground poker games in the New York area that were backed by Mafia families, he said.

In the sports betting scheme, players sometimes altered their performance or took themselves out of games early, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. In one instance, Rozier, while playing for the Hornets, told other he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers that raked in thousands of dollars, Tisch said.

The indictment of Rozier and others says there are nine unnamed co-conspirators including a Florida resident who was an NBA player and 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.

Rozier and other defendants “had access to private information known by NBA players or NBA coaches” that was likely to affect the outcome of games or players’ performances and provided that information to other co-conspirators in exchange for either a flat fee or a share of betting profits, the indictment says.

The NBA had no immediate comment. The league has investigated Rozier previously and still is looking into the actions of former Detroit player Malik Beasley, one of the sources told the AP.

Rozier was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic in Orlando, Florida, in the season opener for both teams on Wednesday evening, though he did not play in the game. He was taken into custody in Orlando early Thursday morning. The team didn’t immediately comment on the arrest.

A message was left with Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, on Thursday. Trusty previously told ESPN that Rozier was told that an initial investigation determined he did nothing wrong after he met with NBA and FBI officials in 2023, the sports network reported.

A message seeking comment was left with Billups on Thursday morning.

The case was brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn that previously prosecuted ex-NBA player Jontay Porter. The former Toronto Raptors center pleaded guilty to charges that he withdrew early from games, claiming illness or injury, so that those in the know could win big by betting on him to underperform expectations.

Billups was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. The five-time All-Star and three-time All-NBA point guard led the Detroit Pistons to their third league title in 2004 as NBA Finals MVP. Boston drafted the former Colorado star with the No. 3 pick overall in 1997. The player known as Mr. Big Shot also played for Toronto, Denver, Minnesota, the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers. Billups won the Joe Dumars Trophy, the NBA’s sportsmanship award, in 2009 while playing for his hometown Denver Nuggets.

The 49-year-old Billups is in his fifth season as Portland’s coach, compiling a 117-212 record. The Trail Blazers opened the season Wednesday night at home with a 118-114 loss to Minnesota.

A game involving Rozier that has been in question was played on March 23, 2023, a matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Rozier played the first 9 minutes and 36 seconds of that game — and not only did not return that night, citing a foot issue, but did not play again that season. Charlotte had eight games remaining and was not in playoff contention, so it did not seem particularly unusual that Rozier was shut down for the season’s final games.

In that March 23 game, Rozier finished with five points, four rebounds and two assists in that opening period — a productive quarter but well below his usual total output for a full game.

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 Charlotte-New Orleans game after the first quarter, with many turning to social media to say that something “shady” had gone on regarding the prop bets involving his stats for that night.

A prop is 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, assists and more.

Richer, Reynolds and Marcelo write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer reported from Washington, and Reynolds reported from Miami. Associated Press reporters David Collins in Hartford, Conn., and Larry Lage in Detroit contributed.