More than 30 current and former NBA players and coaches were detained in the US on Thursday in what the FBI called “a historic arrest”, across a wide-sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and the mafia.
Among those arrested were Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones, in an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spanned the course of years, FBI Director Kash Patel, said in a news briefing.
“The fraud is mind-boggling. It's not hundreds of dollars. It's not thousands of dollars. It's not tens of thousands of dollars. It's not even millions of dollars. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multiyear investigation”, he said.
The FBI, he said, led a coordinated takedown across 11 states to arrest over 30 individuals today responsible for this case, “which is very much ongoing”.
“Not only did we crack into the fraud that these perpetrators committed on the grand stage of the NBA, but we also entered and executed a system of justice against La Cosa Nostra to include the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchesi crime families”, he added.
According to Patel, the charges range from wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery, and illegal gambling.