X-ray glasses? All the ‘mind-boggling’ allegations in the FBI’s NBA gambling probe | CBC News

X-ray tables? Card-reading contact lenses? The … Mafia?

No, it’s not the plot of a George Clooney movie or even another Louvre heist. It’s a massive, real-life illegal gambling probe involving players and coaches from the National Basketball Association and, yes, the Mafia.

The specific allegations in the FBI’s investigation that’s thrown the NBA into chaos are, to quote FBI director Kash Patel, “mind boggling.”

“It’s not thousands of dollars. It’s not tens of thousands of dollars. It’s not even millions of dollars. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud, in theft, in robbery, across a multi-year investigation,” Patel told reporters.

On Thursday, the FBI announced it had conducted a “massive, nationwide takedown” of two separate and illegal poker and sports-betting schemes with ties to Mafia families. The schemes spanned years and involved illicit gains from wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and gambling, Patel said at a press conference in Brooklyn.

But what exactly are the allegations? We’ll break it all down for you.

The cases

The indictments are related to two major cases. One involves sports betting, the other, rigged poker games.

U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said at the news conference that six defendants are accused of participating in an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about NBA athletes and teams.

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 from victims in underground poker games in the New York area that were backed by Mafia families, he said.

The accused

U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson John Marzulli says 31 people are in custody and others are expected to surrender.

NBA Hall of Famer and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones were among those arrested.

Rozier is accused of participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using private insider NBA information, officials said. He was one of several NBA insiders who allegedly provided non-public information about how they would perform to their criminal partners, who in turn used straw bettors to place multiple bets based on the tips.

In March 2023, for instance, Rozier told associates in advance he would leave a game early with a supposed injury, allowing them to place more than $200,000 US in bets that he would not reach his expected statistical totals for the game, officials said.

Billups was charged in a separate case with helping to rig poker games to defraud unknowing players who were lured to the games with the promise of playing against celebrities, officials said. The defendants employed sophisticated technology, including fraudulent card shufflers and what prosecutors called “X-ray tables.”

Both men face money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy charges and were expected to make initial court appearances later Thursday. In a statement Thursday, the NBA said that Rozier and Billups are being placed on “immediate leave from their teams.”

ESPN is reporting that Jones allegedly provided inside information about NBA games to co-defendants who used it to place sports bets. According to the Athletic, Jones allegedly traded information on LeBron James missing a 2023 Lakers game.

While the arrests stemmed from two separate indictments, a handful of defendants were charged in both cases, Nocella said, including Jones.

Authorities say Jones was coached — in real time — about how to play his hands during the poker games.

Hold up. Did you say ‘X-ray tables’?

We did indeed. And that’s just part of it. So, let’s get into the poker part of this saga.

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.”

The victims were often wealthy, according to the indictment viewed by CBC News. Billups and Jones were two of the “face cards,” who also received a portion of the criminal proceeds.

The games were allegedly rigged through sophisticated cheating technology, such as altered card shuffling machines and an “X-ray” device that could read cards placed face down. Prosecutors say that defendants also used a poker chip tray analyzer, card markers and special contact lenses or eyeglasses.

Once the “fish” lost, Mafia members used extortion and violence to make sure they paid their gambling debts, Nocella said.

The scheme involved the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese families, which took a cut of the profits, used extortion and robbery to collect unpaid debts and laundered proceeds through cryptocurrency and other means, according to prosecutors.

“Victims were attracted to play alongside well-known professional athletes and coaches, like Chauncey Billups, only to be unknowingly deceived,” said Christopher Raia, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office.

More on the cheating technology

Because, as CBC’s Kris Reyes said while reporting from New York City today, it sounds “like a movie.”

According to the indictment, the rigged shuffling machines were secretly altered to use concealed technology to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information via interstate wires to an off-site operator.

The Operator, “then communicated that information by cellular telephone to a member of the Cheating Team seated at the Rigged Game poker tables.” That member would then use “secret signalling” to share the information with the other members of the cheating team, the documents say.

Other cheating technology included:

• Electronic poker chip trays that could “secretly read cards placed on the poker table.”
• Card analyzers that “utilized technology loaded onto decoy cellular telephones that could surreptitiously detect which cards were on the table.”
• Playing cards that had markers visible “only to individuals wearing specially designed contact lenses or sunglasses.”

The Associated Press reports that text messages between the defendants as they carried out their scheme show that in a 2019 game in Las Vegas, Billups was winning so many improbable hands with the help of a rigged shuffling machine that his overseers said he needed to lose on purpose, to avoid being suspected of cheating.