Mafia’s Alleged Gambling Scheme Involving NBA Coach and Players Used X-Ray Card Tables to Steal Millions: FBI

NBA head coach Chauncey Billups and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones are among the defendants who were arrested on Thursday on charges related to a gambling ring that allegedly used wireless technology — including x-ray tables, rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contact lenses and sunglasses — to “cheat people out of millions of dollars” during illegal poker games, authorities said.

Billups, 49, was charged Thursday, Oct. 22 in connection with the alleged poker operations which occurred in Manhattan, Miami, Las Vegas and the Hamptons, according to the United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York.

The Portland Trail Blazers coach, who played in the NBA for 17 seasons and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last year, was arrested in Portland hours after his team played its first game of the season on Wednesday night.

Jones, 49, an NBA journeyman whose three seasons in Cleveland overlapped with LeBron James from 2005-2008, was also arrested in connection with the alleged poker games, in which he and Billups were allegedly paid for their participation in the operation, CNN reported. 

Referring to the more than 30 defendants collectively, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, “For years, these individuals allegedly hosted illegal poker games where they used sophisticated technology and enlisted current and former NBA players to cheat people out of millions of dollars. This complex scheme was so far reaching that it included members from four of the organized crime families, and when people refused to pay because they were cheated, these defendants did what organized crime has always done: they used threats, intimidation and violence.”

Jones was also charged in a separate sports betting case, in which Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was indicted in connection with allegedly altering his play during games to benefit bettors.

In the poker games, which involved members of at least three New York Mafia families, victims were “at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contacts lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. of Brooklyn said in a statement.

Face-down cards could be read via the technology, authorities said, and some of the defendants also allegedly used poker chip tray analyzers, “which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera,” he said.

The games were also allegedly held underground, according to the indictment, which meant that they lacked surveillance technology that casinos use, NBC News reported.

“A lot of the features which made this scheme so successful would have been ID’d a lot sooner, or very quickly, in a traditional regulated gaming environment,” said Ian Messenger, a former U.K. law enforcement officer and founder and CEO of the Association of Certified Gaming Compliance Specialists, told the outlet.