AMANDA LOMAN, JARED C. TILTON / AFP
Chauncey Billups, coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and Terry Rozier, player of the Miami Heat, were sidelined from the NBA after their high-profile arrest this Thursday, October 23.
NBA – Victor Wembanyama may have splashed his talent on the resumption of the NBA, the French player has already been ousted in basketball news. At issue: the revelation of a vast gambling scandal which saw a player and a coach from the American championship arrested by the FBI this Thursday, October 23 and then suspended.
Chauncey Billups (49), crowned NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons in 2004 when he was a player and now coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, is notably accused of his alleged participation in rigged poker games.
According to the FBI, which gave a press conference this Thursday, these parties would have been used to extract tens of millions of dollars from poker players with a view to financing the illicit activities of the Cosa Nostra, the powerful Sicilian mafia.
Fixing matches for the benefit of punters
To do this, the organizers and their accomplices would have used, among other things, a machine that rigged the cards when shuffling them and a gaming table equipped with X-rays that could read the players’ cards. Reason why Chauncey Billups, like the other people arrested this Thursday, is suspected of electronic fraud and conspiracy to launder money.
For his part, Terry Rozier, 31, a Miami Heat player who played for the Boston Celtics and the Charlotte Hornets, is suspected of having helped fix basketball matches for the benefit of bettors. Like several other people arrested, he allegedly transmitted information to punters, telling them for example that he would leave a match very early, claiming an injury. Some of the bets under investigation would also have benefited his relatives, for several hundred thousand dollars.
Both Rozier and Billups were the subject of an NBA press release after the revelation of the affair and the FBI press conference. The American championship, which says it takes “these allegations with the utmost seriousness”makes it known that the two men are “immediately suspended, separated from their teams and will continue to cooperate with the authorities”.
