[HN Gopher] U.S. Details Gambling Cases Involving Pro Athletes a...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. Details Gambling Cases Involving Pro Athletes and Mafia
Families
Author : ilamont
Score : 65 points
Date : 2025-10-23 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Ever since the Gilbert Arenas bust I've considered this to be not
| uncommon. Just from the circles these athletes run in and the
| type of fun people tend to have with that amount of money
| available. Even without that amount of money plenty of people
| gamble informally on most anything.
|
| Really bad look for the NBA picking up a second major scandal
| this year, illegal Balmer payments to Kawhi Leonard being the
| first.
| duxup wrote:
| What amazes me is some folks who I thought were smart guys got
| involved in all this, Chauncey Billups.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| https://archive.ph/DgWEo
| chadbennett wrote:
| https://archive.is/DgWEo
| mycodendral wrote:
| NBA legends. Rigged shuffling machines. Specialized contact
| lenses. Instagram mafiosos. This case is incredible.
| nradov wrote:
| The pro sports leagues made a Faustian bargain when they
| partnered with sports books like FanDuel and BetMGM. Those deals
| brought in licensing revenue and drove up short term fan
| engagement because the punters betting on games watch the whole
| thing without switching channels. But long term I think it's
| going to burn their business model. The temptation for players to
| take a bribe is huge and now every time fans see something happen
| on the field that seems unexpected they start to doubt whether
| it's real. If the leagues don't get a handle on this then in a
| few decades they'll be seen as jokes: anyone still watching will
| be doing it for campy or ironic entertainment like professional
| wrestling.
| ClarityJones wrote:
| Professional sports used to exist to profit off viewership, and
| thus games would occasionally be rigged to increase
| entertainment value and align with market demand. However, the
| authenticity carried a large part of why the sports were
| interesting to watch.
|
| Now, sports exist to facilitate gambling. Sports are
| interesting to viewers who have money on the line, and thus the
| authenticity is irrelevant and actually undermines the sport.
| Every gambler wants to believe they have an edge and that the
| outcomes are rigged... in their favor. If the outcomes are
| determined by the players simply trying their best, then what's
| the point of gambling?
| gadders wrote:
| You know sports betting has existed in other counties for
| dozens of years, right?
|
| All these people making predictions like this is some bold leap
| into the unknown but it's been legal in the UK since the 1960s.
| piker wrote:
| The UK hath no fury like a forbidden US market unleashed.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Also been legal in Vegas for decades, including the days of
| "Lefty" Rosenthal and the Stardust Hotel when the mob was
| deeply entrenched there.
| mateo411 wrote:
| I bet somebody could make a movie about this.
| n4r9 wrote:
| The UK has evolved a sophisticated detection and deterrent
| system: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/licensees-and-
| business...
|
| UK regulations are also more coherent, centralised, and
| strict than the patchwork US model.
|
| The question is whether the US has the gumption and
| collaborative power to put something similar in place before
| the damage is done.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> anyone still watching will be doing it for campy or ironic
| entertainment like professional wrestling
|
| "The 1877 Louisville Grays scandal was an incident in which
| members of the Louisville Grays baseball team accepted money to
| lose games. Four players - Bill Craver, Jim Devlin, George Hall
| and Al Nichols - were subsequently banned from professional
| baseball for life."
|
| -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1877_Louisville_Grays_scandal
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| What's going on with the formatting in this article? Why is every
| other paragraph broken by another authors byline? Is this some
| anti-ai posturing by NYT? They've made the article harder to read
| for no reason.
| zuminator wrote:
| It's not an article per se, it's a kind of live news feed, with
| each post showing the author.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| It's not an article, it's a live feed. They do this when a
| story is breaking to make it clear that they're adding
| information as they learn of it, and to match the style of the
| rest of the internet generally.
| heywoods wrote:
| "They used advanced wireless technologies to read the cards dealt
| in each hand and then pass that information to the defendants and
| co-conspirators."
|
| Can anyone take a guess at what this means?
| bobbiechen wrote:
| I think this refers to RFID-embedded playing cards, which have
| apparently been used at the World Series of Poker before:
| https://www.wsop.com/news/wsop-livestreaming-all-summer-with...
|
| >The card information will be known to the viewers by using
| RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology for the very
| first time at the WSOP. Each card has a microchip embedded in
| it that has no impact on the cards or play, but with a
| specially-outfitted poker table, can send an encrypted signal
| to decipher the card's rank and suit. The WSOP has used this
| technology during the 2012-13 WSOP Circuit season with success,
| and it is found throughout European poker events as well.
| Zigurd wrote:
| This is high enshittification. Audiences will turn to
| professional wrestling and roller derby because those athletes
| have integrity.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _> Audiences will turn to professional wrestling and roller
| derby because those athletes have integrity_
|
| You know what the sad part is?
|
| They won't.
|
| Wrestling and roller derby would need to give audiences
| something to bet on before they would switch from football-
| soccer-basketball-baseball.
|
| A switch away from the popular bet-able sports will never
| happen in the absence of another set of corrupt bet-able
| sports.
| watwut wrote:
| When I was young, "I like sports' meant that you like kicking
| the ball with guys or playing basketball or swim often.
|
| Later it meant "I like sitting on couch watching guys on TV
| kick the ball".
|
| Now it means "I am a gambler".
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| ...aaaaaaand we'll be seeing the bankers and financial
| professionals involved with the money laundering catching casss
| right?
|
| Oh come on Chauncey Billus didn't do his betting in Crypto like
| Dogecoin we just gonna let everybody skate like George Sorry-Ass
| Santos I guess?
|
| Damn answered my own question.
| vincefutr23 wrote:
| Do they have proof Chauncey conspired in and profited from the
| rigging? Seems like he got appearance fees in under ground games?
| Interesting if the prosecution can tie him to the fraud itself.
| Announcing it in connection with actual game rigging interesting
| for a case that has nothing really to do with basketball.
| _--__--__ wrote:
| "One indictment in the case lists 32 defendants, including the
| former N.B.A. player and coach Damon Jones and the Portland
| Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, who are both charged with
| wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy,
| according to the docket sheet in the case. Many of the other
| defendants also face those charges, along with counts accusing
| them of operating an illegal gambling enterprise and
| conspiracies to commit extortion and robbery."
|
| They don't necessarily have or need evidence that Billups was
| aware of the rigging, just the regular financial crimes of
| taking payments from the Mafia that will presumably get him to
| cooperate.
| glenstein wrote:
| I guess Austin Powers predicts the future:
|
| >Mr. Nocella said the technology also included "specially
| designed contact lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of
| playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big."
|
| This technology (in a fictionalized eyepatch form) was the setup
| of the "I _also_ like to live dangerously " joke.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzMA1jrm00
| Teever wrote:
| I've wondered about the feasibility of doing something similar
| with scratch lottery tickets.
|
| The way I envision it working is a customer wearing the magic
| glasses says they have superstitious beliefs and they need the
| convenience store clerk to spread the tickets out so that they
| can 'see the aura' or w.e. of the tickets so they can pick a
| winning one.
|
| I'm curious if this is even illegal. I assume that somewhere it
| would be but I bet that in a lot of places it isn't and if you
| were subtle about it you could get away with it for years.
|
| Of course this all relies on the idea that the sensor is
| something that fits in glasses, or can be discretely hidden in
| a broach or something they wear with the video feed displayed
| on their glasses.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Wonder if the whole Ippei thing was part of a bigger rabbit hole
| too
| silexia wrote:
| Ban all gambling again, it is so destructive to the lives of so
| many people who get addicted.
| johng wrote:
| Should we ban anything that could be damaging to people or
| addictive? Slippery slope.
| gdulli wrote:
| This response is so predictable and facile as to be annoying.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Has Trump pardoned them yet?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Whether we should expect that depends on whether his support
| for reinstating Pete Rose is on the basis of the gambling or
| the statutory rape.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-23 23:01 UTC)