The Mob Is Involved In Gambling? Say It Ain't So!
A sprawling FBI probe into mafia-linked gambling and sports rigging schemes led to the arrests this morning of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, according to federal law enforcement officials. The NBA says both men have been placed on leave.
. . . Among the defendants in the dual operations are members of four major American crime families, as well as current and former NBA players and coaches, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
Via The Gateway Pundit,
Former mobster Michael Franzese reacted to the FBI’s raid on an NBA gambling ring tied to the Italian Mafia.
Michael Franzese worked for the Colombo crime family in the 1980s and made a fortune in the gasoline business. His father, Sonny Franzese, also a notorious mafioso, was the underboss for the Colombo crime family.
. . . Rudy Giuliani indicted Michael Franzese five times in the 1980s – and Franzese beat the government five times. Franzese was later indicted again on racketeering and conspiracy charges and spent several years in federal prison.
. . . Franzese said he isn’t surprised to see a gambling ring this large, although he did say it is unusual to see several ‘families’ working together.
Franzese did note that the Colombo crime family was not involved in this gambling ring.
Well, I'm sure glad the Colombo fsmily wasdn't involved. Except I thought the Five Families were history. I thought Rudy Giuliani and FBI agent Joe Pistone AKA Donnie Brasco had done the job. Now that I have free access to AI, I double checked and asked Chrome AI mode, "What was Donnie Brasco's effect on the Five Families?" It answered,
The infiltration of FBI agent Joseph Pistone, under the alias "Donnie Brasco," had a devastating effect on the Bonanno crime family and fundamentally changed how law enforcement approached the Mafia. The consequences rippled through the other four New York families as well, weakening the entire criminal institution.
It looks like it weakened them so badly that they managed to infiltrate professional bssketball and likely other sports. Sports gambling is highly pervasive these days:
Sports betting has become so ubiquitous and so massive in the US that it can be difficult to remember that at the start of 2018, it was only legal in four states, and only in Nevada could you bet on individual games.
All that changed in May of that year, when the Supreme Court stuck down the federal law that barred most forms of sports gambling. Since then, the legal sports gambling industry has spread to 38 states plus Washington, DC, with revenues of nearly $14 billion in 2024, much of which has come from burgeoning and highly addictive mobile apps like DraftKings and FanDuel.
The reason why sports betting was off-limits for so long was because of concerns that the sheer money involved could lead to scandals that would call into question the integrity of sports games.
But there were gambling scandals in professional basketball before 2018. The Discovery series Hustlers Gamblers Crooks covered, just a few weeks ago in season 2 episode 4, the case of former NBA referee Tom Donaghy, who admitted to betting on games he officiated between 2003 and 2007, as well as to providing inside information to intermediaries linked to organized crime.Interviewed in the program, Donaghy alleged that the NBA itself was complicit in rigging games. He said that there were routine meetings with the referees before each game in which the NBA would stress which particular rules the referees were expected to enforce, which inevitably played to the particular strengths and weaknesses of the respective teams. Donaghy said that these instructions were so explicit that he could reliably predict each game's outcome, which he then passed on to the mob, which was very happy with the results.
The NBA categorically denied blah blah blah. The intermediaries named categorically denied blah blah blah. But this was all before 2018 but after Donnie Brasco. And it's worth pointing out that the NBA itself investigated Terry Rozier, one of those arrested last week, and cleared him:
The NBA said it investigated “unusual betting activity’’ related to Terry Rozier in 2023 and did not find a violation of league rules. But now Rozier has been charged in the Eastern District of New York as part of a federal probe into illegal sports betting.
. . . The NBA had initially cleared Rozier following its own investigation. On Jan. 30 2025, news of the investigation in the Eastern District of New York first came to light. At that point, the NBA said it would cooperate with federal authorities.
The FBI versus the mob has always been a hot potato. J Edgar Hoover apparently felt the FBI never had the resources to fight the whole strength of the mafia, so he found it politic to deny that the mafia existed, but subsequently the FBI seems to have wanted to claim credit for beating the mob via the Donnie Brasco story.The current scandal is juist as sensitive, with the ESPN sports analyst Stephen A Smith sensing a Trump connection:
Speaking on “First Take,” Smith said that he believes President Donald Trump is behind the arrests and that a trend is forming that is “very concerning.”
“I’m watching a press conference with the director of the FBI. Tell me when we’ve seen that,” Smith said. “We’ve seen accusations before, we’ve seen athletes get in trouble with the law before. You don’t see the director of the FBI having a press conference.
“It’s not coincidental. It’s not an accident. It’s a statement, and it’s a warning that more is coming. And that’s what they’re saying here.”
Well, back in the day, the director of the FBI denied the mafia existed. If anything, Kash Patel is trying to point out this isn't your grandfather's FBI, which ought to be a good thing. But it's looking like Tom Donaghy, the disgraced NBA referee, may have a point, and if the NBA itself is complicit in fixing games, this could have a major effect on basketball and other professional sports. Stephen A Smith could even be out of a job if pro sports are discredited overall.