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NBA head coach Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier have been arrested for alleged involvement in illegal gambling, US officials said.

Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and a member of the National Basketball Association Hall of Fame, was arrested in connection with rigged illegal poker games tied to Mafia crime families, FBI Director Kash Patel said.

Rozier and a former NBA player and assistant coach, Damon Jones, were among six people arrested in a sports betting case, Patel said at a press conference in New York.

US Attorney Joseph Nocella said the 49-year-old Billups was one of more than 30 people indicted for alleged involvement in a “nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games” that used “high-tech cheating technology”.

Rozier and Jones allegedly “participated in one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalised in the United States,” Nocella said.

He described it as “an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams”.

The defendants were involved in illegal betting on the performance of players on the Charlotte Hornets, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Toronto Raptors, Nocella said.

He said the NBA has co-operated with the investigation which led to the indictments unsealed on Thursday.

New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch cited an example of a March 23, 2023, game in which Rozier was then playing for the Hornets.

Rozier let co-conspirators “know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury”, Tisch said.

“Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers” on his expected performance in the game, she said. “Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes, and those bets paid out, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit.”

As for the rigged poker games allegedly involving Billups, the organisers used “custom shuffling machines that could read cards, barcoded decks and hidden cameras built into tables and light fixtures,” Tisch said.

“Victims believed that they were sitting at a fair table,” she said. “Instead, they were cheated out of millions.”

NBA player banned for life

Billups retired from the NBA as a player in 2014 and has been the head coach of the Trail Blazers since 2021. He was on the bench for the team’s first game of the season on Wednesday, a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Rozier, 31, was the 16th overall pick by the Boston Celtics in the 2015 draft. He has averaged 13.9 points per game playing for three teams over his 11-year NBA career.

Rozier is suffering from a hamstring injury and did not play in the Heat’s opening game of the NBA season on Wednesday (local time).

Rozier’s lawyer, James Trusty, said that prosecutors “appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing”.

“Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case,” Trusty said. “Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”

Nocella said the indictment in the sports gambling case was linked to the arrest last year of a former NBA player, Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors, who was banned from the league for life for his role in a betting scandal.

Porter was accused of placing bets linked to his performance on the court. He has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing.

NBA players are forbidden from wagering on NBA games under league rules.

Billups’ arrest comes three months after that of former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas, who was arrested in July on charges of running illegal high-stakes poker games at his Los Angeles mansion.

Arenas has pleaded not guilty.

-Agence France-Presse