The FBI on Thursday announced charges against Portland Trailblazers Head Coach Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier, a player for the Miami Heat.
In all, more than 30 people were charged in two years-long federal investigations spanning 11 states involving wire fraud, money laundering, illegal gambling and extortion.
Rozier is accused of participating in an illegal sports betting scheme using insider NBA information. The FBI says those charged used nonpublic information to bet on at least seven NBA games between March 2023 and March 2024 involving the Charlotte Hornets, Orlando Magic, Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, according to the indictment, ESPN reports. In three of the seven games, players intentionally removed themselves from contests to benefit the gamblers' bets, according to the indictment.
Billups is charged in a separate indictment alleging a wide-ranging scheme to rig underground poker games that were backed by Mafia families, authorities said. The defendants are accused of using technology to steal millions from victims in the New York area.
“This is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger,” John Kindt, a professor emeritus for business at the University of Illinois, said on Washington Watch Thursday.
Advances in technology have created a climate ripe for abuse, he told show host Tony Perkins.
“The National Gambling Impact Study Commission 30 years ago … it said, ‘do not let this sports gambling spread. Keep it off your cell phones. You cannot control gambling on the Internet. Keep it criminalized. Of course, we’re in a totally different world now,” Kindt said.
At the college level, the NCAA prohibits student-athletes, coaches and staff from wagering on any sport in which the NCAA sponsors a championship — whether collegiate or professional.
Participating in bets on one’s own team, or providing inside information or manipulating one’s performance for gambling purposes, results in severe penalties — including permanent loss of eligibility.
The NCAA emphasizes protecting the integrity of competition, monitoring suspicious wagering patterns, educating members on gambling risks, and working with betting-monitoring services.
Professionally, the National Football League’s (NFL) policy is one of the clearest: all league personnel (including players, coaches, front-office staff) are prohibited from placing bets on any NFL game, practice or event.
Policies vary among other pro sports.
There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, but Donald Trump’s administration could help.
“The smartest thing that President Trump could do is call for a new National Gambling Impact Study Commission. It's been 30 years since the last one," Kindt advised. "The second thing he can do to help all of this cheating that's going on in professional sports is to call for the establishment of a new Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act.
Concerns from former NBA player
The first such legislation was authored by former Sen. Bill Bradley, who played in the NBA before winning a U.S. Senate seat from New Jersey.
Bradley believed legalized sports betting would threaten the integrity of pro and college athletics, exploit fans and athletes by turning sports into a gambling commodity and erode public trust in fair competition.
The PASPA prohibited states from “sponsoring, operating, advertising, promoting, licensing, or authorizing” sports gambling on professional or amateur sports.
Essentially, PASPA froze the sports-betting landscape as it existed in 1992. Nevada could keep its sportsbooks, and limited forms of betting in Delaware, Oregon, and Montana were grandfathered in. Everyone else was locked out.
It was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2018, declared unconstitutional in a 6-3 ruling.
The Court reasoned that PASPA violated the Tenth Amendment’s “anti-commandeering” principle -- meaning Congress cannot order state legislatures to enforce or maintain federal policy.
PASPA didn’t criminalize sports betting directly; instead, it told states they could not legalize it. That, the Court said, was unconstitutional interference with state sovereignty.
“The original one was overturned by the Supreme Court on a technicality,” Kindt said.
Barack Obama’s administration contributed to the current climate with its interpretation of the Wire Act, introduced by then-Attorney Gen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1961 as a tool to disrupt organized crime’s gambling empire.
At that time, illegal bookmaking — mainly on horse racing and sports — was a major source of revenue for Mafia syndicates.
Organized crime relied on telephone lines and telegraphs to relay betting odds, results, and wagers across state lines.
The Wire Act made it a crime to use a wire communication facility to transmit bets, wagers, or information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest.
In December 2011, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) under President Obama issued a formal legal opinion that narrowed the scope of the Wire Act.
The OLC concluded that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting, not to other forms of online gambling like poker or lotteries.
Kindt to Trump: Try harder
In 2019, the Trump DOJ issued a new OLC opinion reversing the 2011 view — saying the Wire Act covered all forms of gambling again.
But in 2021, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against this interpretation in a case involving the New Hampshire Lottery, effectively restoring the Obama-era 2011 interpretation.
“The Obama administration gutted the Wire Act. If President Trump would simply get the DOJ to reinstate that, that would go a long way to helping remedy these types of problems,” Kindt said.
