Oct. 27—A former Philadelphia probation officer and a former city police officer have been charged with illegally connecting bettors to an overseas sports gambling website that allowed them to place hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets over nearly a decade, according to federal authorities.
Joseph Moore and James P. DeAngelo Jr. each face one count of conducting an illegal gambling business, court records show. Moore, the former probation officer, pleaded guilty in federal court Monday.
DeAngelo, the former police officer, is scheduled to appear in court later this week and has been charged by information, which typically indicates that a defendant intends to plead guilty.
Prosecutors said in charging documents that Moore ran the scheme from 2017 to 2025 — operating “block pools” based on NFL or NCAA basketball games, or helping bettors place ordinary wagers on different sporting events. He would sometimes send mass emails to hundreds of bettors advertising pools he was running, the documents said, with entry fees of a few hundred dollars and payouts in the thousands for winners.
Moore often collected 10% of the winners’ earnings as a “tip,” prosecutors said, and he sometimes allowed bettors to place wagers on credit even if they had incurred multiple losses.
He conducted some of his business from his probation office, the documents said, and saved records from the operation on his work computer. At one point, prosecutors said, he recruited another probation officer to help collect and transfer money from bettors using peer-to-peer apps such as Venmo and Cash App.
DeAngelo, meanwhile, helped maintain the operation’s access to the overseas gambling site, prosecutors said, and he sometimes accepted wagers from individual bettors.
Prosecutors did not specify whether the investigation led either man to lose his job. But in charging documents, prosecutors said Moore ran the operation until February 2025, and Martin O’Rourke, a spokesperson for the First Judicial District, said Monday that Moore resigned from the probation department that month.
A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, and DeAngelo did not have an attorney listed in court records.
The case was unsealed Monday, just days after federal prosecutors in New York unveiled two sweeping indictments charging several NBA figures with participating in illegal gambling schemes, one of which involved a player allegedly providing inside information to bettors about specific games.
The fallout from that scandal has come quickly, with some commentators questioning whether sports leagues have grown too close to the betting industry, and Congress requesting a briefing from the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver.
© 2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit www.inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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