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U.S. details gambling cases involving pro athletes and mafia families
- kjkjadksj 1y agoEver 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.
- ClarityJones 1y ago[flagged]
- duxup 1y agoNaw man this wasn't "just" gambling.
- ClarityJones 1y ago[flagged]
- squigz 1y agoSomething being illegal doesn't mean you just go to prison for it.
- duxup 1y agoIt doesn't matter what I think about gambling, the charges range across a number of things aren't just someone simply placing a bet. As for corked bat and such, none of that is the case and I've no idea where you are going with that. I wonder if you read the article.
- ndriscoll 1y agoWhile it makes perfect sense to me that cheating (including steroid use) or throwing a game in sports should be 100% legal (modulo contractual agreements with a league), if I'm reading correctly, the issue is that the people involved also had some connection to the gambling, which seems more fraud-adjacent. The linked article is basically impossible to follow though so unclear if that's a correct interpretation.
- ClarityJones 1y agoYou're right that there has to be a connection now, and this uncertainty is part of the problem. If the connection is a crime, then what about that connection hurts someone? How can the government maintain the rule of law in this type of market? If a player bets me that he won't play more than 10 minutes, what does fraud even mean? Sure, he has every right to walk off the court when he's tired of playing. Even if he double-pinky promises to play for as long as he can, why endure the charade? These are not arms-length transactions that contribute to the production of valuable goods and services. All it does is invite moral hazards into existing markets. The real moral qualm that the public generally has is with the cheating / steroids / etc., which isn't a crime. However, those who want to deal in gambling are riding on that moral outrage to prosecute people for gambling in a way that other gamblers didn't like. Fundamentally, gambling is a den of liars and cheats. If it's going to be legal, then make it legal... including the fraud. Let people know that, sure you're allowed to gamble on poker, and the other guy is also allowed to cheat. The government should not waste resources guaranteeing that everyone's gambling is free of cheating nor spend time investigating whether Player 1 was really injured when he took a knee in the 4th quarter, or if Player 2 took a peek at Player 3's cards. The nation isn't a casino. That type of law enforcement does not provide a valuable contribution to society.
- OutOfHere 1y agoDid you not read that the games were rigged? Additional associated crimes were gunpoint robbery and extortion.
- ClarityJones 1y ago[flagged]
- aaronax 1y ago> Of course they were rigged. I think there is a pretty big gap between wrestling being fake versus NBA, NFL, etc. being fake/rigged. The latter is a very uncommonly held belief AFAICT.
- ClarityJones 1y ago[flagged]
- HelloMcFly 1y ago> Of course they were rigged. This is sports we're talking about In this context "the games" or "they" refer to poker games, not professional sports contests.
- ClarityJones 1y ago[flagged]
- HelloMcFly 1y agoOkay, have you read the article? Are you having your own conversation? What point are you making? The "rigged games" in the context of the gambling arrests in this article are rigged poker games. So when the person you responded to referred to rigged games, and you go: > Of course they were rigged. This is sports we're talking about It seems like you're in a conversation that nobody else is having.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- OutOfHere 1y agohttps://archive.ph/DgWEo https://archive.ph/DgWEo
- chadbennett 1y agohttps://archive.is/DgWEo https://archive.is/DgWEo
- mycodendral 1y agoNBA legends. Rigged shuffling machines. Specialized contact lenses. Instagram mafiosos. This case is incredible.
- ranadomo 1y agoThat relatively small in-person games would use rigged shuffling machines, cameras, see-through playing cards, lenses etc seems to all but guarantee that every manner of deception and fraud is being perpetrated by all online gambling sites. Just stuffing any table with two or more "players/bots" that can see all the cards or share their hands with each other would guarantee enormous payouts on the hundreds of millions at stake in the industry. There are obviously a million more things sites could be doing to take money and there's absolutely no source code control the government does to ensure that the whatever code the regulators look at is running in production and that no other systems are running in parallel, like a bot service that colludes to win.
- sillyfluke 1y agoKnowing nothing about the case, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is reality tv distraction porn that's going to end up in shakedowns and pardons being tied up in a nice little bow in the final episode.
- nradov 1y agoThe 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 1y agoProfessional 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?
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThere has been so many questionable calls by officiating in most all pro sports over the years that have heavily favored the large market team. People are only half kidding when they say things like “the fix is in” or “the refs are bought.”
- gadders 1y agoYou 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.
- 1y ago
- Our_Benefactors 1y agoWhat’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 1y agoIt's not an article per se, it's a kind of live news feed, with each post showing the author.
- chomp 1y ago[flagged]
- jay_kyburz 1y agoI don't down vote very often, but that's not how we roll around here.
- pgwhalen 1y agoIt’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 1y ago"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 1y agoI 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-hole-cards-and-commentary/ 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.
- bobbiechen 1y agoUpdate next day, I can't believe it was X-rays... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45693599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45693599
- theturtle 1y ago[dead]
- Zigurd 1y agoThis is high enshittification. Audiences will turn to professional wrestling and roller derby because those athletes have integrity.
- bilbo0s 1y ago>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 1y agoWhen 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".
- rufus_foreman 1y agoGrowing up in the 80's it always meant all 3. You used to have to do a little more work if you wanted to gamble though.
- 6stringmerc 1y ago…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 1y agoDo 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.
- _--__--__ 1y ago"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 1y agoI 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzMA1jrm00
- Teever 1y agoI'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.
- kadoban 1y agoThe "specially designed contact lenses" thing in cards depends on pre-marked cards, either a man on the inside doing it before the game or surreptiously marking them during play (some ink on your hand for example that you can sneak on to cards as you see them in play). That or the glasses can just feed you information gathered elsewhere, like from someone with a view of the cards. They're not x-ray glasses and won't help you with scratch cards. Besides, someone working with a store or bribing a cashier would make way more sense than goofy theatrics about auras.
- ceo_tim_crook 1y ago[dead]
- nextworddev 1y agoWonder if the whole Ippei thing was part of a bigger rabbit hole too
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- silexia 1y agoBan all gambling again, it is so destructive to the lives of so many people who get addicted.
- johng 1y agoShould we ban anything that could be damaging to people or addictive? Slippery slope.
- gdulli 1y agoThis response is so predictable and facile as to be annoying.
- bdangubic 1y agoit is because large majority of the population cannot comprehend that (especially in america) they have very little freedom. so then you mention “ban” and we all go “oh shit this is a free country “slippery slope banning ____” however, all the shit that is already banned - ahhh that’s ok, just don’t ban any more thing (unless it is something I want to ban…)
- bdangubic 1y agowhy can’t my 12-year old snort cocaine in school tomorrow? that is banned for some reason…
- Ylpertnodi 1y agoYour 12-year old child *can snort cocaine in school tomorrow, if they want. Precluding availability, and/ or a physical restriction (by others) there is no reason why they can't. Or, are you talking about 'consequences'?
- bdangubic 1y agono, I am talking about laws which make cocaine illegal - didn’t realize I had to point that
- fred_is_fred 1y agoHas Trump pardoned them yet?
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoWhether we should expect that depends on whether his support for reinstating Pete Rose is on the basis of the gambling or the statutory rape.
- mgh2 1y agoFBI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEosfgiEgg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEosfgiEgg
- Scottn1 1y agoFor anyone interested in the Poker part of this news, two years ago I read an article in Wired magazine about a security consultant that was able to "hack" the automatic card shuffle machines. These machines are commonly used throughout the world in casinos and private games. He got the machines to send the cards dealt to each player to his phone. This showed all hands dealt and the eventual seat with the winning hand BEFORE the players even looked at their cards! At the time, I knew where there is enough money, this will surely become a problem. It was the first thing I thought about reading this news today. Wired did a follow up article today in relation to this news: https://www.wired.com/story/how-hacked-card-shufflers-allegedly-enabled-a-mob-fueled-poker-scam-that-rocked-the-nba/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-hacked-card-shufflers-allege... The video from 2023 explaining it all and demonstrating it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA