Three former and current NBA players were arrested in two related federal criminal gambling cases Thursday, alleging a shocking scandal at a level unseen in American sports since the widespread legalization of sports betting in 2018.<\/p>\n
NBA Hall-of-Famer and current head coach Chauncey Billups and assistant coach Damon Jones were charged with their involvement in illegal high-stakes poker games while Jones and current player Terry Rozier were arrested in a second case involving insider information to place sports bets illegally.<\/p>\n
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Here are the six most explosive claims from the sports betting indictment<\/a>:<\/p>\n DraftKings, FanDuel among the legal sportsbooks used<\/p>\n Part of the government\u2019s case<\/a> against Jones, Rozier, and four other co-conspirators is that they defrauded four sportsbooks by using insider information prohibited by law. The names of of the four books in the indictment were not mentioned, but it says two of the books were the \u201cNBA\u2019s co-official sports betting partners.\u201d<\/p>\n Those two books are DraftKings and FanDuel, the two U.S. leaders by handle.<\/p>\n Four NBA players targeted, including stars<\/p>\n Four NBA players were mentioned, though not named, in the indictment. These anonymous players aren\u2019t charged criminally, but law enforcement officials believe the defendants used insider information on these players to place illegal sports bets.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Player 1: A member of the Portland Trail Blazers during the 2022-2023 season, where Billups was the head coach, who sat out a March 24, 2023 game against the Chicago Bulls. He is listed in the\u00a0indictment<\/a> as one of the team\u2019s four highest scorers that season, meaning it is either Skylar Mays, Jerami Grant, Anfernee Simons, or nine-time All-Star Damian Lillard. Lillard, Grant, Simons, and Jusuf Nurkic (the team\u2019s No. 5 leading scorer) all sat out that game.<\/p>\n Player 2: A starter for the Orlando Magic who didn\u2019t play in an April 6 game against Cleveland. The team\u2019s primary starters that year were Franz Wagner, Paolo Banchero, Markelle Fultz, Wendell Carter Jr., and Gary Harris.<\/p>\n Player 3: A \u201cprominent\u201d player for the Los Angeles Lakers who didn\u2019t play in the team\u2019s Feb. 9 game against Milwaukee. LeBron James, a former teammate of Jones, was the most notable player to miss the game, a Lakers loss.<\/p>\n Player 4: One of the Lakers\u2019 \u201cbest\u201d players during the 2023-2024 season, the indictment alleges, some of the defendants placed bets with the expectation the individual would play fewer minutes than normal during the team\u2019s Jan. 15 game against Oklahoma City. That player was potentially Lakers\u2019 All-Star Anthony Davis, who had the second-most minutes played on the team in a Los Angeles win.<\/p>\n Billups mentioned, but not charged<\/p>\n Billups is \u201cCo-Conspirator 8,\u201d an Oregon resident described as \u201can NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014\u201d and a coach since 2021. Though not charged in this probe criminally, the indictment alleges Billups disclosed information to one of the defendants, a friend, about the playing status of one of the Blazers.<\/p>\n The question is the fine line between what a coach tells a friend and what that person does with the information. Officials don\u2019t believe Billups can be charged criminally from what they\u2019ve investigated so far. But it raises more concerns about what an active head coach knew about how information he disclosed would be used for illegal betting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Roughly $250,000 wagered on one Terry Rozier game<\/p>\n The indictment alleges the syndicate wagered roughly a quarter of a million dollars on Terry Rozier Under props in a March 23 game he left early due to injury.<\/p>\n This is an unusually high amount of money for a player prop on a regular-season NBA game, which presumably triggered alerts from the affected sportsbooks and integrity monitoring services\u00a0that helped spark the criminal investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n 7 games mentioned in indictment<\/p>\n The indictment cites two additional Toronto Raptors games in addition to the five mentioned above<\/a>: a Jan. 26, 2024 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers and a March 20, 2024 loss to the Sacramento Kings.<\/p>\n Both games involved Jontay Porter, who has pled guilty to criminal charges and is awaiting sentencing. The indictment alleges some of the defendants threatened Porter over his gambling debts to leave games early, allowing them to bet on his player prop Unders.<\/p>\n Of the seven, the only game where the outcome went against the defendants was the Lakers game where \u201cPlayer 4\u201d played more than they had allegedly anticipated.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Bettor loses big<\/p>\n An unnamed co-conspirator not charged in the indictment allegedly won $1,500 on a bet using information that Rozier wouldn\u2019t play a full game. The indictment claims the bettor lost $4,000 on unrelated bets in the ensuing days using the same sportsbook.<\/p>\n This article originally appeared on Covers.com<\/a>, read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three former and current NBA players were arrested in two related federal criminal gambling cases Thursday, alleging a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[3718,32215,16107,64,63,27164,2066,6115,7222,141140,19711,71094,5330,107931,7225,141134,70742,7896,481,7236,7232,63747,5130,590,5673,12985,19710,4621,5674,142685,85,23371,41165,17602,119281],"class_list":["post-238428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-american-sports","tag-anfernee-simons","tag-anthony-davis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chauncey-billups","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-cleveland","tag-damian-lillard","tag-damon-jones","tag-franz-wagner","tag-gary-harris","tag-head-coach","tag-insider-information","tag-jerami-grant","tag-jontay-porter","tag-jusuf-nurkic","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-clippers","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-markelle-fultz","tag-milwaukee","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-orlando-magic","tag-paolo-banchero","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-skylar-mays","tag-sports","tag-sports-betting","tag-terry-rozier","tag-toronto-raptors","tag-wendell-carter-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}