In what is shaping up to be one of the largest scandals in NBA history, over 30 individuals, including high-profile basketball figures like Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier, and Damon Jones, have been arrested in connection with a massive illegal sports betting and rigged poker game ring with mafia involvement. The FBI announced the arrests yesterday, revealing a network of current and former NBA stars and coaches who are said to have been collaborating with members of organized crime families to manipulate sports bets and rig poker games, as reported by FOX5 Las Vegas and News3LV.
Among the accused is Las Vegas resident Shane Hennen, nicknamed "Sugar," known for to publicly claim to be a successful sports bettor. Hennen, along with numerous co-conspirators, apparently took advantage of insider information from NBA players like Terry Rozier, who in March 2023 informed a friend about his intention to leave a game early due to injury, allowing them to place substantial bets on the game's outcome. This scheme and others reportedly led to bets exceeding $200,000 on Rozier’s anticipated under-performance, with Rozier indeed leaving the game within nine minutes. Similarly, Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors is alleged to have shared information about his own early departures from games due to injuries, aiding Hennen and others in betting activities.
The scope of the scandal is vast, with a spread across 11 states and millions of dollars said to have been defrauded from victims. U.S. District Attorney Joseph Nocella revealed in a press conference the nature of the rigged poker games, wherein sophisticated cheating technology, such as altered shuffling machines and X-ray tables, was allegedly used to scam players out of significant sums, including one victim who lost $1.8 million. Damon Jones, who was also arrested in Las Vegas, is listed in both the poker and sports betting indictments, as is Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, accused of hosting such rigged games.
"The mob has always kept up with technology, but we haven't seen before x-ray poker tables and sophisticated shuffling machines that tell people who the winners are going to be," Zach Jensen from the Mob Museum told News3LV. The scandal also involves the use of prop bets to manipulate the performance of athletes during games to make a profit. Keith O'Brien, author of "Charlie Hustle," emphasized the serious implications such activities have on the integrity of sport itself: "There's no reason to watch the outcome or hear about the outcome of games if we don't believe what's happening is real." The FBI has outlined that the laundering of winnings was systematically carried out through cash exchanges, shell companies, and transactions in cryptocurrency.
