X-ray tables? Card reading lenses? The … mafia?
No, it’s not a site for a george clooney movie or some other Louvre Heist. It’s a massive, real-life illegal gambling operation involving players and coaches from the National Basketball Association and, yes, the mafia.
Certain allegations in the FBI investigation that have thrown the NBA into turmoil 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. It’s theft, in the management of many years,” Patel told reporters.
On Thursday, the FBI announced that it had conducted a “huge, nationwide,” nationwide takedown of “two separate and illegal poker and sports betting systems tied to Mafia families. The schemes have been suspected for years and involve wiretapping for wire fraud, money laundering, embezzlement and gambling, Patel said at a press conference in Brooklyn.
But what exactly are the allegations? We will break it all down for you.
Cases
Miracles are related to two major cases. Some include sports betting, others, integrated poker games.
US Attorney Joseph NocLella Jr. he said at a news conference accused of participating in an insider sports betting conspiracy that used information from the NBA and teams.
The second case involves 31 defendants in a nationwide scheme to illegally start poker games, NocLella said. The defendants include athletes for hire who are accused of using technology to steal millions from victims of New York poker games that have been returned to Mafia families, he said.
The suspect
A spokesman for the US Attorney’s office, John Mazzulli, says 31 people are in custody and others are expected to surrender.
NBA Hall of Famer and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billips, former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones were among those arrested.
Rozier is accused of participating in an illegal sports betting scheme by using private NBA insider information, officials said. He was one of the many NBA INSPERS who had to give non-public information about how they would do to their fellow players, who use upplathi watchers to place many bets based on tips.
MeTherefore, Rozier 2023, Rozier told friends in advance to leave the game in the morning due to injury, allowing them to put more than $ 200,000 in the US who would not be able to bet the expectations of this game, officials said.
Billups was charged separately with helping facilitate poker games to lure unwitting players into the games with the promise of celebrity appearances, officials said. The defendants used sophisticated technology, including fraud card shufflers and what prosecutors call “x-ray” tables.
Both men face embezzlement and wire fraud charges and are expected to make initial court appearances on Thursday. In a statement Thursday, the NBA said Rozier and Billups were being “immediately suspended from their respective teams.”
ESPN reports that Jones He allegedly provided inside information about NBA games to plaintiffs who used it to place sports bets. According to the athlete, Jones is accused of selling information about LeBron James missing the 2023 Lakers game.
While the arrests came from two different groups, there are charges against the defendants in both incidents, NocLella said, including Jones.
Authorities say Jones was coached — in real time — on how to play his hands in poker games.
Wait. Do you mean ‘x-ray tables’?
We really did. And that’s part of it. So, let’s get into the poker part of this saga.
No order He mentions a scheme targeting victims who were known as “fish,” who were lured to participate in hard-hitting games by chance and athletes who were known as “deal cards.”
The victims were often wealthy, according to the case reviewed by CBC News. Billips and Jones were the two “face cards,” who received half of the criminal case.
The games are said to have been updated with sophisticated cheating technology, such as a modified card-changing device and an “X-ray” device that can read face-down cards. Prosecutors said the defendants also used a Poker Chip Tray Analyzer, card markers and special contact lenses or eyeglasses.
When the “fish” is lost, mafia members resort to violence to make sure they pay off their gambling debts, NocLella said.
The plan involved the Bonano, Gambino, Lucchese and Gelovese families, who took advantage, used extortion and extortion to collect unpaid debts and other means through Cryptocurrency and other means, according to other methods, according to methods.
“Victims were lured into playing well-known athletes and coaches, such as Councey Billips, only to be unwittingly duped,” it said. Christopher RAIA, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York office.
More on cheat technology
Because, as CBC’s Kris Reyes said while reporting from New York City today, it feels “like a movie.”
Miraculously, the machines agree to smoke they were secretly switched to use hidden technology to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and transmit that information over interstate wires to the incoming operator.
The operator, “then relayed that information via cell phone to a member of the cheating team who was seated at the hard poker tables.” This member would then use “secret signing” to share information with other members of the cheating group, the documents said.
Other cheat technologies included:
- Some electronic poker machines can “secretly read the cards at the poker table.”
- Card analysis “the technology used is loaded to trick cell phones that can detect which cards are on the table.”
- Playing cards had visible signs “only for people wearing specially designed lenses or glasses.”
Accompanying media reportsThe EXT messages between the defendants as they make their plan show that in the 2019 game in Las Vegas, Billips won a lot of incomparable waves with the help of his moving machine they need to lose the goal.
