From trick contact lenses to NBA 'Face Cards' — how the mob allegedly rigged high-stakes poker games

Rigged shuffling machines, bodyguards named "Big Bruce" manning the door, and shadowy rooms in Las Vegas and East Hampton. It sounds like scenes from "Ocean's 11" or a James Bond movie.

These details were buried in a 22-page federal indictment unsealed in Brooklyn on Thursday that accused more than 30 defendants of wire fraud, operating illegal gambling businesses, and money laundering conspiracy. The case offers an inside look at the high-tech, high-stakes world of underground gambling operations that continue to thrive despite the proliferation of online betting.

The "highly sophisticated and lucrative fraud scheme" started in 2019 with weekly poker games that targeted wealthy people in posh neighborhoods of New York City and beyond.

There was the "Lexington Avenue Game," which was largely controlled by the Bonanno crime family and took place in an apartment building where a penthouse is available for $30,000 per month. The indictment said the Gambino crime family ran the "Washington Place Game" — referring to a Greenwich Village brownstone that sold last year for $17 million and had been featured in "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."

Conspirators with nicknames like "Flappy" and "Pookie" organized the games, hiring high-profile NBA names like Portland Trailblazers coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA combo guard Damon Jones as "face cards" to "lure" in unsuspecting victims, often called whales or fish, the feds said. These NBA stars were referred to as "Face Cards," slang for someone with an attractive face, and would get a cut of the proceeds "in exchange for their participation in the scheme."

Damon Jones, center, was allegedly used to lure in victims to the rigged poker games. Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images

According to court documents, the tactic worked. One victim was so "star struck" that he "acted like he wanted Chauncey to have his money," one defendant texted. For a different game, Billups was paid $50,000, the documents said; Jones, who texted that he "needed it bad," requested a $10,000 advance for another game.

The stakes were high — generating more than $7 million in winnings, with one victim coughing up $1.8 million during a single Lexington Avenue game in the summer of 2023, the indictment alleged. Two men from an East Hampton game that also took place in the summer of 2023 lost $105,000 and $46,500, while a Miami victim lost $60,000 in September 2024, the feds said.

X-Ray tables and specialty glasses

The NBA on Thursday said it placed Billups and Terry Rozier, a defendant in a separate but related case, on leave. "We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority," the NBA said in a statement.

Lawyers for the defendants either couldn't be reached or didn't return requests for comment. They are expected to be arraigned starting on Thursday at courthouses across the country as arrests were made in various cities, including Orlando and Portland, Oregon.

Many of the games were straight — illegal, sure, because the mob collected proceeds as the house — but not rigged. The rigged ones are where the cinematic technology came in.

The most common cases relied on bugged shuffling machines. Thanks to concealed technology — supplied by defendants with nicknames "Black Tony," "Black Rob," "Sugar," and "Curt" — the shufflers could read the cards in the deck and predict which player had the best hand. That information was relayed to out-of-state operators, like Sugar, who would then communicate it by cellphone to an associate at the poker table, known as the "quarterback" or "driver," according to the feds. The driver would use a secret signal — tapping their chin or touching their wrist to their arm, for example — to let those in on the scheme know who had the winning hand, and the game would unfurl from there, court documents said.

Machines to shuffle cards. Court documents

Other rigged games relied on electronic poker chip trays that could read the cards placed on the table using hidden cameras, poker tables made with X-ray technology, "card analyzers" that could communicate, via decoy cellphone, which cards were on the table, and decks of cards marked with symbols only visible to those wearing specially designed sunglasses or contact lenses, the indictment said.

An X-ray poker table. Court documents

Threats, intimidation, and money laundering

At times, they would lose on purpose, texting each other from the table on the best ways to avoid suspicion.

"Guys please let him win a hand he's in for 40k in 40 minutes he will leave if he gets no traction," one defendant known as "Big Mikey" texted in September 2024.

But usually, the outcome was a win for the cheating team.

What came next was comparatively low-tech. Members of the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families would use old school "threats and intimidation" to make sure victims paid up, the indictment alleges.

"U sent a bunch of goons to solve your problems," one victim texted, after he was assaulted by one of the defendants.

The money collected was wired to shell companies run by "Doc," who would launder it and return it in the form of cryptocurrency or cold hard cash, the indictment said.

This is one of two federal cases facing Sugar, Jones, and another defendant known as Spook.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors also brought a case Thursday that accused numerous current and former NBA players of an altogether different kind of gambling ring — one that relied on faked injuries and insider knowledge to make fraudulent online bets.

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