NBA coach and player among dozens charged in US gambling cases

An NBA player and a team head coach are among more than 30 people arrested as part of an FBI investigation into illegal sports betting and rigged poker games linked to organised crime.

Miami Heat point guard Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, were among those named in two indictments brought by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday morning.

One indictment alleges that six defendants, including Rozier, used non-public information, such as when a player might sit out a game due to injury, in order to make online bets on how individual players would perform during NBA matches. The allegations centre on seven NBA games that took place between February 2023 and March 2024.

US attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella called it “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became legalised”.

The second indictment accuses 31 people of taking part in a scheme orchestrated by organised crime families to run fixed poker games across the US. The scheme involved rigged card shuffling machines, hidden cameras, X-ray tables and contact lenses that can read pre-marked cards.

In some cases, victims — dubbed fish — were lured to games by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes, including Billups, prosecutors said.

“What the fish didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game . . . were in on the scam,” said Nocella.