(WLUK) — A former Milwaukee Bucks player was among the more than 30 people indicted Thursday in a shocking NBA gambling scandal involving insider trading and illegal bets on basketball games.
Damon Jones was with the Bucks during the 2003-04 and 2008-09 seasons and went on to become an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Jones, along with current Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, are three of the most high-profile arrests.
The FBI is investigating two separate cases — an illegal sports betting operation and an illegal poker game ring involving organized crime — but Jones is allegedly involved in both cases.
Authorities accused Billups of participating in rigged poker games tied to the Italian mafia. Jones was also charged in this indictment for allegedly serving as one of the “big names” used to lure in poker players. According to CBS Sports:
Victims would be lured into playing with a well-known former NBA player in Billups only to be cheated out of their money using technology that ranged from rigged shuffling machines to X-rays that could read cards that were face down on the table to contact lenses that could identify marked cards, according to the indictment.
Billups was not specifically named in the gambling indictment, but may have been sharing insider information with bettors as the Blazers’ coach.
The second case involves bettors using non-public information, such as when a player would miss a game or exit it early due to injury.
ABC News reports Jones and Rozier used their connections and “passed inside information to four co-defendants, who are accused of passing the information to a network of sports bettors. Those bettors allegedly placed wagers with online sports books or retail betting outlets, which prohibit betting based on nonpublic information.”
In their investigation, the FBI cited seven games in which insider information was reportedly shared and used for bets. The Bucks were competing in one of those games — on Feb. 9, 2023, when Milwaukee visited the Los Angeles Lakers.
According to the indictment, before the Bucks-Lakers game, Jones is accused of texting a co-conspirator:
Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out! [Player 3] is out tonight. Bet enough so Djones can eat.
The unnamed player ended up not playing, and the Bucks won 115-106.
A look at the box score from that night shows Lebron James did not play that night. Player 3 is identified in the indictment as “a prominent NBA player” who Jones had been teammates with and coached. Jones had access to the Lakers during the 2022-23 season as a friend, former teammate and coach to LeBron James.
Officials say James was not aware Jones shared details about his playing status.
As for Rozier, he allegedly left a March 2023 game against the New Orleans Pelicans less than 10 minutes in. He had reportedly told people he planned to exit the game early.
“Members of the group being investigated allegedly placed more than $200,000 in bets on Rozier’s “under” line across multiple prop bets,” CBS Sports says.
The NBA issued the following statement Thursday:
We are in the process of reviewing the federal indictments announced today. Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups are being placed on immediate leave from their teams, and we will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities. WE take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains or top priority.