NBA stars arrested over poker, mafia, and ‘fixing’: What are the FBI's charges against Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier?

Former hoops participant and at present train of the NBA team up Portland Trail Blazers, Chauncey Billups, and Miami Heat player Terry Rozier were arrested on Thursday for alleged involvement in illegal gambling, US officials said.

Their arrest is part of a wider set of investigations by the FBI into illegal gambling. And it involves card games, the mafia, and possibly fixing NBA matches.

Rigging poker, with a mafia link: Charges against Billups are not necessarily about basketball. A former Detroit Pistons star who is in the Hall of Fame of the American basketball league, Bilups allegedly rigged illegal poker games that were tied to Mafia crime families, FBI Director Kash Patel said.

‘High-tech cheating’: US Attorney Joseph Nocella said Billups, 49, was one of over 30 people indicted for alleged involvement in a "nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games" that used "high-tech cheating technology."

'Exploited confidential info on NBA': Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and an assistant coach, Damon Jones, who is also a former player, were among six people arrested in a sports betting case, Kash Patel said at a press conference in New York. The FBI chief described their alleged crime as “an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams”. He said they “participated in one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States”.

Whom did they bet on? Those arrested were allegedly involved in illegal betting on the performance of players of the Charlotte Hornets, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, officials said. The NBA has cooperated with the investigation which led to the indictments unsealed on Thursday.

New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch cited an example of a March 23, 2023, game in which Rozier was then playing for the Hornets.

Rozier let co-conspirators know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury, Tisch said.

"Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers" on his expected performance in the game, she said. "Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes, and those bets paid out, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit."

As for the rigged poker games allegedly involving Billups, the organisers used “custom shuffling machines that could read cards, barcoded decks and hidden cameras built into tables and light fixtures”.

"Victims believed that they were sitting at a fair table," she said. "Instead, they were cheated out of millions."

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