By Kavita Mistry 
Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups is among a group of people charged in a separate illegal poker scheme with alleged ties to the Mafia, officials said.
Federal prosecutor Joseph Nocella Jr. told reporters the poker games were a “confidence scheme” in which players were “rigged from the start”, using devices to shuffle cards and X-ray players’ hands. The scheme also allegedly involved professional basketball players.
The games started in 2019 and were played in the Hamptons, Manhattan, Las Vegas and Miami, prosecutors said. They said the illegal operation netted its organisers “millions of dollars in profits” with an estimated $7 million in proceeds from gambling alone. The two-year investigation was led by the NYPD and FBI, Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters.
If players didn’t pay their gambling losses, members of the organised crime groups allegedly used intimidation and violence, officials said.
“Today, we announce dozens of arrests for massive corruption in our city’s underground poker and gambling circles,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement. “The arrestees come from all walks of life — including some we would never expect to be in this room today.”
“The scope of the sports crime here is absolutely breathtaking,” FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters at a press conference in Brooklyn. “ We’re talking about knockouts of millions of bones in fraud, theft and highway robbery. ”
Billups, who led the NBA scandals in their season- opening palm against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday, played 17 times in the NBA, appearing in six each- Star Games and winning a crown with the Detroit Pistons. In 2004, he helped the Pistons capture the NBA Championship and was named Tests MVP.
FBI adjunct director Christopher Raia, of the New York Field Office, described the criminal charges as a “civil takedown ” involving 34 defendants as part of two interrelated illegal gambling and poker operations.