NEW YORK (AP) — Former Louisville basketball star Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups are among 30 people charged Thursday in connection with schemes involving illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by the Mafia, authorities said.
Rozier — who averaged 17 points per game for the 2014-15 Cardinals team that made the Elite Eight — is accused in participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information, officials said. Billups — a 2004 NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame — is charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games that were backed by Mafia families, authorities said.
Both men face money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy charges and were expected to make initial court appearances later Thursday.
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, said Joseph Nocella, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. 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 in underground poker games in the New York area that were backed by Mafia families, he said.
“My message to the defendants who’ve been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out,” Nocella said.
A message seeking comment was left Thursday morning with Billups. A message was also left with Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty. 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.
Athletes accused of leaving games early
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 people he was planning to leave the game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing them 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, 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.
‘Face cards’ were used to lure in the ‘fish’, authorities say
Nocella said the scheme targeted victims known as “fish,” who were lured to participate in the rigged games with the chance to play alongside former athletes who were known as “face cards.” Billups was one of those celebrities, Nocella said.
The games were rigged through 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.
And once the “fish” lost, the mafia used extortion and violence to make sure they paid their gambling debts, Nocella said.
Losses from the rigged poker games top $7 million — and counting, commissioner says
Organizers brought in well-known former and current players and coaches to appear legitimate and used hidden cameras, bar-coded decks and shuffling machines that could read the order of cards, Tisch said.
“Victims believed that they were sitting at a fair table,” she said. “Instead, they were cheated out of millions.”
Losses exceed $7 million and continue to grow, with one victim losing $1.8 million, Tisch said. When people refused to pay, the defendants used threats, intimidation, and violence, she said.
New York’s formidable crime families were involved, police commissioner says
Investigators found that the scheme involved members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese crime families, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the news conference.
“Bringing four of the five families together in a single indictment is extraordinarily rare,” Tisch said. “It reflects how deep and how far this investigation reached and the skill and the persistence it took to get here.”
She said they used “traditional mob enforcement methods, combined with new technology to expand the reach of their operations.”
The NBA had investigated
The NBA, which had investigated Rozier previously, had no immediate comment.
Rozier was in uniform as the Heat played the Magic on Wednesday evening 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 morning. The team did not immediately comment on the arrest.
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 a matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans on March 23, 2023. 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 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 or assists.
Durkin Richer reported from Washington, and Reynolds reported from Miami. Associated Press writers David Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and Larry Lage in Detroit contributed to this report.
