Two schemes yielded millions of dollars, officials said.
Thirty-four people, including a current NBA coach and player, have been arrested and charged for allegedly participating in two wide-ranging, illegal schemes.
One scheme featured rigging illegal poker games through the use of various technology, such as an X-ray table, authorities said. The other allegedly involved utilizing private information to place fake bets.
FBI Director Kash Patel told a press conference on Oct. 23 that the scale of the fraud “is mind-boggling.”
“It’s not hundreds of dollars. 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 and theft and robbery,” he said.
Here’s what to know.
Shuffling Machines, X-Ray Table
A broad gambling operation utilized an X-ray table and other technology in poker games to cheat people, authorities said.
“The scheme targeted victims known as ‘fish,’ who were often lured to participate in these rigged games by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes who were known as ‘face cards,’” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella told the briefing.
Chauncey Billups, 49, coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and former NBA player Damon Jones, 49, were among the so-called face cards, Nocella said.
“What the victims, the ‘fish,’ didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game—from the dealer to the players, including the face cards—were in on the scam,” he said. “Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.”
The defendants utilized manipulated shuffling machines that would deal cards in a particular order, according to charging documents.
Information from the rigged machines would be sent to a person offsite, who would communicate to one of the players, referred to as the “quarterback” or “driver.” That player would touch certain chips or employ another way to signal to other co-conspirators playing in the game.
The scheme also utilized an X-ray table that could “read cards face down on the table”, a poker chip tray with hidden cameras that could look at cards, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said.
A number of the games took place in the New York City area, including at buildings on Lexington Avenue and at Washington Place in the borough of Manhattan.
The Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, and Bonanno crime families had control over non-rigged poker games around New York City and became involved in the rigged games, according to officials.
“Bringing four of the five families together in a single indictment is extraordinarily rare,” New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. “It reflects how deep and how far this investigation reached, and the skill and the persistence it took to get here. That work uncovered a deliberate, technologically sophisticated operation designed to carry out their crimes.”
The operation yielded at least $7 million, the FBI said.
The defendants laundered the money they made through cash exchanges and other methods, according to charging documents. Defendants face decades in prison on counts including wire fraud conspiracy, operating an illegal gambling business, and money laundering conspiracy.
Billups and Jones were among the 31 people charged in the alleged enterprise.
“We are aware of the allegations involving head coach Chauncey Billups, and the Trail Blazers are fully cooperating with the investigation,” the Trail Blazers said in a statement to news outlets.
Billups and his attorney declined to comment to reporters on Thursday. Jones did not have an attorney listed on the court docket.
