New scandal, same problem

This post was provided by News Now Warsaw

By Roger Grosssman
News Now Warsaw

WARSAW — Last week, 34 people were arrested for their part in separate FBI investigations into various forms of gambling.

A current head coach in the NBA and a current player in the NBA were among those taken into custody.

There are two basic themes to the arrests: those involved in sports betting irregularities and those involved in a poker scam.

The NBA coach arrested was Chauncey Billups, coach of the Blazers, who is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for his accomplishments as a player.

The player arrested was Terry Rozier of the Miami Heat.

Among the other people arrested is a former NBA player who was working for an NBA team named Damon Jones.

FBI Director Kash Patel held a press conference after the first 30 people were arrested and explained what those arrested were accused of doing.

That, in itself, was jarring.

The leader of the FBI was on our TV screens explaining how people involved in professional sports teams and leagues were going to be charged with crimes that we see in movies and TV shows but never in real life.

Billups is accused of using his connections to bring people to high-stakes poker games that were rigged.

Patel told us on Thursday that the places where these games took place were set up with technology intended to cheat people out of their money. That included rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contact lenses and sunglasses that allowed players to read the backs of playing cards that were specially marked. The people who were brought into the games had no idea what was happening and lost big money.

And the people “running” the games and collecting the money afterward are people whom the Department of Justice says are in with four major organized crime families in the United States.

When people didn’t pay, the mob did “mob things” to scare and intimidate the victims into settling up.

The other side of this mess is what might best be described as “insider trading”.

Rozier and Jones are accused of giving out information that the rank-and-file NBA fan or sports bettor didn’t have.

For example, the charges against them claim that they knew that a certain player wasn’t going to play in a game or was going to play fewer minutes in that night’s game compared to their normal minutes. They are accused of taking that information and sharing it with people who bet on NBA games.

Knowing that a certain player was going to play less minutes meant bettors could find a prop bet on that player for how many points that player would score in that game and “take the under” (bet that he would score less than where the betting agency set the line for that player).

It was not a guaranteed winning bet, but it was as close as you are going to find.

And it’s illegal.

The situation is terrible.

It’s awful.

It was completely predictable.

My voice was not the only voice to cry out when sports gambling spread like COVID across the country. I, and others like me, warned anyone who would listen that things like what happened last week would happen more and more.

I warned that the integrity of sports was about to be compromised, and maybe to the point that we couldn’t trust the results of sporting events anymore.

We are about halfway there, at this point.

It is an incredible example of how entering into a relationship with gambling is never going to end well.

Gambling is a “taker.” Even when you think you are getting something from it, gambling is letting you win occasionally to improve its grip on you.

And it never lets go.

You will be hearing more and more about these kinds of scandals as time goes on. They aren’t going away.

Knowing that, imagine how stunning it was to hear the president of the NCAA say last week that a proposal is likely to be accepted that would allow college athletes to bet on professional sports leagues.

I am not kidding.

Pro athletes and coaches who make millions of dollars are involved in gambling-related behavior in the name of making more money. What, then, should we expect from college kids who may or may not be enjoying the fruit of NIL money?

Think it will get worse?

Bet on the “over.”

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