Shadows on the Court: The Mafia’s Grip on NBA Gambling

In a bombshell that has rocked the basketball world just as the 2025-26 NBA season tipped off, federal authorities unveiled a sprawling gambling scandal linking organized crime to the league’s elite.

On October 23, over 30 individuals— including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier—were arrested in a crackdown on insider betting and Mafia-orchestrated poker scams.

What began as whispers of point-shaving rumors has exploded into revelations of high-tech fraud, extortion, and multimillion-dollar heists, exposing how the underworld infiltrated the hardwood for profit.

At the heart of the operation were New York’s infamous “Five Families,” though indictments spotlight four: Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese. These groups, remnants of La Cosa Nostra, didn’t just dip toes into sports betting; they engineered a sophisticated ecosystem of rigged games. Prosecutors allege the schemes netted “tens of millions” in illicit gains, with one poker ring alone siphoning over $7 million from high-roller victims since 2019. The Mafia’s role? Providing muscle through threats and violence to collect debts, while NBA insiders supplied the glamour—and the edge—to lure marks.

The poker fraud, dubbed a “multimillion-dollar scam,” unfolded in opulent backrooms from Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to Las Vegas high-rises. Games drew celebrities and tycoons, but beneath the velvet tables lurked gadgets straight out of a spy thriller. Rigged card shufflers, embedded with hidden readers and wireless analyzers, scanned decks mid-shuffle and beamed data to remote operators via encrypted apps.

These puppeteers then texted accomplices at the table, dictating bets and folds to bleed opponents dry. X-ray-embedded tables pierced face-down cards like thermal scanners, revealing hidden hands. Decoy cellphones doubled as card analyzers, while marked decks—etched with invisible ink—were legible only through special contact lenses or glasses worn by cheaters. One indicted Lucchese associate, Thomas “Tommy Juice” Gelardo, allegedly oversaw a 2023 session that fleeced a single victim of $1.8 million, enforced by mob enforcers’ veiled warnings of “accidents.”

NBA figures like Billups and former player Damon Jones served as “face cards”—trusted celebrities who enticed whales into the trap, pocketing cuts of the winnings. Billups, a 2004 champion and Hall of Famer, allegedly netted $50,000 from two rigged games in 2019-2020, using his star power to mask the fix.

Jones, indicted on both poker and betting charges, even sold tips on LeBron James sitting out a February 2023 Lakers game, tipping off proxies who cashed in on player-prop wagers. These weren’t isolated hustles; they formed a pipeline where poker losses funneled victims toward NBA bets, blurring lines between cards and courts.

The NBA-specific rigging was subtler but no less insidious: insider trading on non-public info. Rozier, known as “Scary Terry,” faces wire fraud and money laundering charges for feeding details on seven games from March 2023 to 2024, spanning teams like the Hornets, Magic, Blazers, Lakers, and Raptors.

He reportedly benched himself in three contests to tank prop bets on his points or minutes, collecting around $100,000 via a friend acting as a mule. Bets, placed through offshore networks, racked up in the hundreds of thousands per game—exploiting injuries, rotations, and even last-minute scratches. This echoes the 2024 Jontay Porter ban but scales it up, with Mafia proxies laundering proceeds through shell companies and crypto.

The fallout is seismic. Billups and Rozier are on indefinite leave, their passports seized and travel curtailed. The Blazers and Heat scramble for stability amid a $76 billion TV deal that ironically includes gambling ads from FanDuel and DraftKings. 33 Whispers tie the schemes to celebrity haunts, like a $17 million NYC townhouse once rented by Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott, allegedly a poker venue. 3 As FBI Director Kash Patel vows deeper probes, the league faces existential questions: How porous are locker rooms? Will fans bet on integrity, or just the spread?

This scandal isn’t just a stain—it’s a siren. In an era where legal sports wagering tops $100 billion annually, the Mafia’s comeback via rigged shuffles and shadowed tips reminds us: The house always wins, especially when it owns the deck. The NBA must purge the rot, or risk the court’s final buzzer sounding like a gavel.