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.
“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.
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.
The NBA has cooperated with the law enforcement investigations, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella said. The basketball association did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The arrests stem from two major fraud-related cases: one involving sports betting, and the other linked to “rigged poker games,” Nocella said.
The latter indictment encompasses 31 defendants 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.
The games that took place in the New York area were backed by the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families, he said.
“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. 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. (CNBC)
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