NYC mafiosos and NBA stars used a combination of high-tech contraptions and old-school gambling tricks to swindle hapless high-rollers out of $7 million in a sprawling backroom poker scheme, prosecutors alleged in an explosive indictment Thursday.
The years-long con depended on “advanced wireless technologies,” the indictment read, along with a network of operators monitoring games remotely and communicating with handlers planted inside the room — some of whom filled the poker table and were all working together to gauge their unknowing victims.
Card shuffling machines that had been tampered with took center stage in the con, with mobsters from four of New York’s Five Families allegedly rigging them with card readers and computerized analyzers, which would broadcast the best hands to an operator outside the game room.
US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella, Jr. speaks alongside FBI Director Kash Patel on the arrests in connection to the gambling scheme involving the mafia and NBA stars. AP
Portland Trailblazers head coach and NBA Hall of Fame member Chauncey Billups was one of the people indicted in connection to the scheme. Getty Images
“At the Rigged Games, the members of the Cheating Teams … used card shuffling machines that were purportedly randomly shuffling the playing cards to ensure fairness,” the indictment read. “However, the Rigged Shuffling Machines were secretly altered to use concealed technology.”
From there the operator would send a message by cellphone to a teammate seated at the poker table, who would use “secret signaling” to tell their cronies in the game how to play the hand and bet to manipulate their target.
Other times, the card table itself would be in on the con — with the scammers allegedly utilizing surfaces rigged with X-ray cameras that could read cards laying face down on the felt.
“Decoy cellular telephones” that could similarly read and analyze cards were also used, prosecutors said.
A card shuffler that was rigged up with a reader and analyzer that would tell a remote operator the best hands. US Attorney / EDNY
An x-ray table that can read cards placed on the felt to rig the poker games. US Attorney / EDNY
And most shockingly, poker cards would sometimes be tagged with marks only visible to players wearing special glasses or contact lenses on their very eyeballs — enabling the cheaters to play a rigged game in full view of their oblivious victims, according to prosecutors.
What’s worse — most of this tech is widely available online, with sites advertising their cheating wares for a few hundred of thousand dollars.
But that was just at the game table — the con began long before victims ever sat down to play, and could get scary once the cards were down.
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Mafiosos would lure their high-roller targets — known within the criminal circle as “fish” — to their secret games using former NBA players — known as “face cards” — which in this scheme allegedly included Hall of Famer and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, among others.
Those players were allegedly in on the scheme, and would receive a cut of the dirty winnings.
Billups seen playing poker in 2019 with suspects Sophia Wei (center) and Saul Becher (behind). Obtained by NYPost
Sometimes every player at the table — except for the mark — was in on the scam, with players winning and losing hands as needed to trick their target into betting more and more until they lost.
Then once the game was over — one series of games in summer 2023 netted $1.8 million from a single victim — mobsters would allegedly use “threats and intimidation” to make sure the losers paid up.
“Through the Rigged Poker Scheme, the defendants and their co-conspirators defrauded Victims of millions of dollars,” the indictment from the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York read.
The FBI has arrested 31 people involved in a rigged poker game ring backed by the New York City organized crime families.
Ernest Aiello — reputed Bonanno mobster
Nelson “Spanish G” Alvarez
Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella
Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh
Saul Becher — professional poker player
Chauncey Billups — Portland Trail Blazers coach, NBA Hall of Famer and 2004 NBA champion
Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino
Eric “Spooky” Earnest
Lee Fama — professional poker player
John Gallo
Marco Garzon
Thomas “Tommy Juice” Gelardo — reputed Lucchese mobster charged in 2013 for beating porn star girlfriend
Jamie Gilet
Tony “Black Tony” Goodson
Kenny Han
Shane “Sugar” Henne
Osman “Albanian Bruce” Hoti
Horatio Hu
Zhen “Scruli” Hu
Damon “Dee Jones” Jones — NBA player from 1998 to 2009
Joseph Lanni
John “John South” Mazzola
Curtis Meeks
Nicholas Minucci
Michael Renzulli
Anthony Ruggiero Jr.
Anthony “Doc” Shnayderman
Robert “Black Rob” Stroud
Seth Trustman
Sophia “Pookie” Wei
Julius Ziliani
“Victims of the Rigger Poker Scheme believed they were participating in ‘straight’ illegal poker games and that they were gambling against other participants on equal footing,” it added.
“In reality, however, the defendants and their co-conspirators, who constituted the remaining participants purportedly playing in the poker games, worked together on cheating teams.”
The con had begun at least by 2019, prosecutors alleged, with many of the games taking place in the heart of New York City and involving members of the Lucchese, Genovese, Gambino La Cosa Nostra and Bonanno crime families, prosecutors alleged.
More than 30 people have been charged in the poker scheme, with the games allegedly taking place in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Las Vegas and Miami.