Chauncey Billups, an NBA Hall of Fame player and head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and Terry Rozier, a guard with the Miami Heat, were among more than 30 people charged on Thursday in connection with two separate but related federal gambling investigations that involved the league and the Mafia.

The schemes – one of them focused on insider sports betting and another that rigged poker games nationwide – spanned years and involved tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains from wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and gambling, FBI Director Kash Patel said at a press conference in Brooklyn on Thursday.

Rozier was one of several National Basketball Association insiders who allegedly provided non-public information about upcoming games to their criminal partners, who in turn used straw bettors to place multiple bets based on the tips, authorities said.

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

"This is the insider trading saga for the NBA," Patel said.

Billups was charged in a separate case with helping to rig poker games to defraud unknowing players lured to the games with the promise of playing against celebrities, officials said.

The defendants employed sophisticated technology to fix the games in New York, Las Vegas, Miami and elsewhere, including fraudulent card shufflers and x-ray tables.

That scheme also involved the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese organised crime families in New York, which controlled some of the underground poker games in the city where the rigging took place, officials said.

The families 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.

While the arrests stemmed from two separate indictments, a handful of defendants were charged in both cases, Brooklyn US Attorney Joseph Nocella said, including former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones.

In a statement, the NBA said Rozier and Billups had been placed on leave and that the league would continue to cooperate with authorities.

"We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority," the statement said.

Rozier's lawyer, James Trusty, said prosecutors "appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case."

The Trail Blazers said the team was "fully cooperating with the investigation" and that assistant coach Tiago Splitter would take over as interim head coach.

The arrests are likely to increase scrutiny of the relationship between online sportsbooks and professional sports leagues, which have reaped the benefits of a massive expansion in legalised betting even as they also sought to assure fans and gamblers that the integrity of their games was unaffected.

Some lawmakers have expressed concern about the proliferation of bets that could be most easily manipulated by players, such as prop bets, in which bettors can wager on whether an individual player will hit or miss specific statistical totals in a given game.

RTHK's US correspondent, Mark Niu, said the league could be on a slippery slope it did not properly address the issue.

"When fans don't believe in the integrity of the game, business dries up. So does fandom, merchandise, TV ratings, the whole business model kind of crumbles," he told the Hong Kong Today programme.

"That's why in the past, betting rules have been so strict and players get whole sessions and lectures from when they enter the league about not betting on the sport."

But he noted how sports betting ads have become a fixture during live broadcasts and NBA programmes on TV.

"So on the one hand, the league takes allegations seriously, but during games, ads scroll across TV screens and monitors, promoting gambling constantly," he said.

"Many legal analysts say it's somewhat hypocritical for the league to not realise that something like this is bound to happen when gambling and sports become so intertwined."

Billups, 49, is in his fifth year as Portland's head coach. He played for seven teams during his NBA career and won a championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. He was expected to make an initial court appearance on Thursday in Portland.

Rozier, 31, is in his 11th NBA season. His 2025-26 salary is US$26.6 million, according to the sports contract tracking website Spotrac. He was arrested in Orlando, Florida, where the Heat played on Wednesday night. He was expected to appear in court there on Thursday. (Reuters)
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Last updated: 2025-10-24 HKT 07:29