October 24, 2025

Friday, October 24, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

The fish rots from the head down.

A failed casino owner sets the norms in our poor country.

NBA player and head coach among 30 arrested in illegal US gambling investigation

The NBA, one of the world’s most prominent sports leagues, found itself associated with illegal gambling again on Thursday after two prominent stars were arrested in a sweeping federal investigation. Chauncey Billups, a Hall of Fame player who is now coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was arrested in connection with a poker operation linked to the mafia, while Miami Heat star Terry Rozier is accused of taking part in a scheme to manipulate games.

“Today, we are here in New York to announce a historic arrest across a wide sweeping criminal enterprise,” the FBI director, Kash Patel, said at a news conference on Thursday unveiling the charges. “This is an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spanned the course of years.”

Federal prosecutors unsealed two indictments on Thursday, and announced that they had arrested “over 30 individuals” across multiple states as part of a federal investigation into “sports rigging” and illegal gambling operations that authorities say involved the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families.

Patel said on Thursday that defendants are facing charges including wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery and illegal gambling

“The fraud is mind-boggling,” Patel said. “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery.”

Joseph Nocella, the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, said on Thursday the first indictment involves sports betting and six defendants whom he said were involved in a sports-betting scheme that “exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams”.

The New York police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said the alleged operation centered on “professional basketball, where players and associates allegedly used inside information to manipulate prop bets on major sports betting platforms”.

Tisch described an alleged March 2024 incident involving Rozier, currently a guard for the Miami Heat but who was then playing for the Charlotte Hornets.

Tisch said Rozier “allegedly let others close to him noted know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury”.

“Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his under statistics,” she alleged, adding: “Rozier exited the game afterh just nine minutes, and those bets paid out, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit.”

“The proceeds were later delivered to his home,” she alleged.

The second indictment, authorities said, “involves 31 defendants” including Billups and the former NBA player Damon Jones.

The defendants are alleged to “have participated in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games”.

According to prosecutors, the alleged illegal rigged poker games began in 2019 and occurred across the US, including in the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Miami and Manhattan, and were backed by the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families.

The defendants, prosecutors said on Thursday, allegedly used hi-tech cheating technology to “steal millions of dollars from victims in underground poker games that were secretly fixed”.

Officials said the operation targeted victims, known as “fish”, who were “lured to participate in these rigged games by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes” , who, he said, were referred to as “face cards”.

The so-called “face cards”, officials said, included Billups and Jones.

“What the victims didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam,” Nocella said. “Once the game was under way, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.”

Prosecutors claim that the defendants used “very sophisticated cheating technologies” including rigged shuffling machines, poker chip tray analyzers, special contact lenses and an X-ray poker table that could read cards.

The Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families, Nocella said, “had pre existing control over non-rigged illegal poker games around New York City” and so “as a result, they also became involved in the rigged poker games, helping to organize the games, and taking a cut of the proceedings and working to enforce the collection of debts”.

Authorities say that the defendants “laundered their proceeds, including through cash exchanges, use of multiple shell companies and through cryptocurrency transfers as part of the scheme”.

Nocella also alleged that the defendants and their co-conspirators “also committed acts of violence, including the gunpoint robbery of a person in order to obtain a rigged shuffling machine and extortions that were perpetrated against victims in order to ensure that they repaid their gambling debt”.

Nocella emphasized that all defendants are presumed innocent until they are proven guilty in a court of law.

On Thursday, the NBA issued a statement saying it was reviewing the indictments. It said Rozier and Billups had been placed on immediate leave. “We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority,” the organization said.

Rozier was taken into custody in Orlando early Thursday morning. His team did not immediately comment on the arrest.

Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said prosecutors “appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Trusty previously told ESPN that Rozier was told that an initial investigation determined he did nothing wrong after he met with NBA and FBI officials in 2023.

The case was brought by the same US attorney’s office in Brooklyn that previously prosecuted the ex-NBA player Jontay Porter. The former Toronto Raptors center pleaded guilty to charges that he withdrew early from games, claiming illness or injury, so that those in the know could win while betting on him to underperform expectations. The NBA later banned Porter from the league for life.

A game involving Rozier that has been in question was played on 23 March 2023, a matchup between the Hornets and the New Orleans Pelicans. Rozier played the first 10 minutes of that game – and not only did he not return that night, citing a foot issue, but he did not play again that season. Charlotte had eight games remaining and were not in playoff contention, so it did not seem particularly unusual that Rozier was shut down for the season’s final games.

In that 23 March game, Rozier finished with five points, four rebounds and two assists in that opening period – a productive quarter, but well below his usual total output for a full game.

Rozier has $160m in career earnings, and is in the final year of a four-year $96m contract. Billups was a five-time All-Star during his playing career and won a championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. He retired in 2014 and has been Portland head coach since 2021.(The Guardian)

NCAA allows college athletes to bet on professional sports starting Nov. 1 - ABC News.

The NCAA approved a rule change on Wednesday that will allow athletes and athletic department staff members to bet on professional sports.

Two weeks after the Division I cabinet approved the change, Division II and III management councils signed off on it, allowing the new rule to go into effect Nov. 1.

This doesn’t change the NCAA rule forbidding athletes from betting on college sports. The NCAA also prohibits sharing information about college competitions with bettors. The institution also doesn’t accept advertising or sponsorships of NCAA championships by betting sites.

Despite the change, the NCAA emphasized that it doesn’t endorse betting on sports, particularly for student-athletes.

NCAA President Charlie Baker anticipated the rule change would be passed when he talked with the media on Monday at a Big East roundtable on the future of college basketball.

“This change recognizes the realities of today’s sports environment without compromising our commitment to protecting the integrity of college competition or the well-being of student-athletes," said Roberta Page, director of athletics at Slippery Rock and chair of the Division II Management Council.

The change comes as NCAA enforcement caseloads involving sports betting violations have increased in recent years. Last month, the NCAA banned three men’s college basketball players for sports betting, saying they had bet on their own games at Fresno State and San Jose State and were able to share thousands of dollars in payouts.

“We run the largest integrity program in the world on sports betting across all the various games,” Baker said Monday. “Sadly, we discovered some student athletes involved with some problematic activity.” ( ABC News)

On a related matter.

The issue of athletes and gambling is not new. The Pete Rose case has captured major attention for almost 4 decades.

Rose was banned from baseball in 1989 for betting on games as a manager for the Cincinnati Reds. After years of denial, he eventually admitted to the betting, and the ban effectively ended his eligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In May 2025, Major League Baseball officially removed Rose from the permanently ineligible list, which is posthumous, meaning he is now eligible for Hall of Fame consideration.

Guess who pushed for the gambling man’s entry in the Hall of Fame?

Guess who supports corruption with no penalties for breaking rules?

Yesterday this happened. Trump, the corrupt, issued a pardon for a man who made him even richer. These are now the norms America lives by.

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Trump’s retribution dance.

More responses to Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Thursday what President Trump is legally allowed to destroy without oversight as the administration plans to demolish the White House's entire East Wing for a ballroom.

Watch her response. 👇

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Friday is Day 24 of Trump’s shutdown.

From Dan Rather - Shutdown Dragout

Thursday is day 23 of the government shutdown and the two sides are no closer to ending it than they were on day one. The Democrats refuse to vote on a measure that would reopen the government without Republicans agreeing to extend subsidies for health insurance provided by the Affordable Care Act, which provides insurance to 24 million Americans.

Without the subsidy extensions, the average increase could be more than 100%. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates someone paying $888 for coverage now will pay $1904 in 2026. But these estimates will become reality very soon, because open enrollment starts in just over a week. With people beginning to get letters and emails outlining the unsubsidized costs, congressional Republicans will be under greater pressure to make a deal.

Call them. 202-224-3121. Any one of them. Or any two or three.

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Update on A Promising Campaign.

Jasmine Crockett "strongly" considering U.S. Senate bid

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said Wednesday she "will strongly be considering" a run for U.S. Senate, citing polling that suggests she would be a frontrunner in the Democratic primary.

Why it matters: Crockett has built a national brand as the exact kind of tough political brawler that Democratic voters are increasingly looking to in their primaries.

The second-term lawmaker is known on Capitol Hill for her withering and often profane verbal clashes with Republicans at committee hearings.

Republicans even moved to censure Crockett in March for referring to wheelchair-bound Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as "Governor Hot Wheels."

Driving the news: Crockett expressed interest in a Senate run on SiriusXM's The Lurie Daniel Favors Show while discussing her options following Texas Republicans' mid-decade redistricting.

The maps, which are being challenged in court, would leave Dallas' three House Democrats with just two Democratic-leaning districts to run in.

"If you want to take my seat of 766,000 away, I feel like there has to be some karma in that to where I take your seat that is for 30 million away," Crockett said of a potential Senate run.

"The question will be whether or not we believe that we've got enough juice to expand the electorate," she said. "If we can expand the electorate, then I will strongly be considering hopping in the Senate race."

Between the lines: Crockett cited polling that shows her running highly competitive in the Democratic primary.

"Every other day there's a poll that comes out that makes it clear that I can win the primary for the U.S. Senate race in Texas," she said.

A University of Houston/Texas Southern University poll released earlier this month found Crockett with support from 31% of likely Democratic primary voters.

State Rep. James Talarico and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke each garnered 25% in the survey, while 13% went for former Rep. Colin Allred. O'Rourke hasn't announced a run.

Zoom out: Texas has emerged as a top target for Senate Democrats, especially since scandal-prone state Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a primary challenge against GOP Sen. John Cornyn.

Polls have shown the incumbent senator and his right-wing challenger running neck and neck.

The GOP primary got another shock earlier this month when Rep. Wesley Hunt jumped in.

Democrats are particularly hopeful that Paxton can pull of a primary win, believing his nomination to be their best chance at winning the long-coveted Texas Senate seat.(Axios)

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Update on what is happening in Virginia.

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