NEW YORK (AFP) — National Basketball Association (NBA) head coach Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested on Thursday for alleged involvement in illegal gambling on a “mind-boggling” scale, US officials said.

Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and a member of the National Basketball Association Hall of Fame, was arrested in connection with rigged illegal poker games tied to Mafia crime families, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel said.

Rozier and a former NBA player and assistant coach, Damon Jones, were among six people arrested in a sports betting case, Patel said at a press conference in New York.

“The fraud is mind boggling,” Patel said.

 “It’s not hundreds of dollars, it’s not 1000s of dollars, it’s not 10s of 1000s of dollars. It’s not even millions of dollars We’re talking about 10s of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation.”

Billups and Rozier were placed on “immediate leave” following their arrests, the NBA said in a brief statement, adding that it was reviewing the indictments and cooperating with authorities.

US Attorney Joseph Nocella said the 49-year-old Billups was one of more than 30 people indicted for alleged involvement in a “nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games” that used “high-tech cheating technology.”

Rozier and Jones allegedly “participated in one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States,” Nocella said.

He described it as “an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams.”

The defendants were involved in illegal betting on the performance of players on the Charlotte Hornets, the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors, Nocella said.

He said the NBA has cooperated with the investigation that led to the indictments unsealed on Thursday.

New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch cited an example of a 23 March 2023 game in which Rozier was then playing for the Hornets. 

Rozier let co-conspirators “know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury,” Tisch said.

“Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers” on his expected performance in the game, she said. 

“Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes, and those bets paid out, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit.”

As for the rigged poker games allegedly involving Billups, the organizers used “custom shuffling machines that could read cards, barcoded decks and hidden cameras built into tables and light fixtures,” Tisch said.

“Victims believed that they were sitting at a fair table,” she said. 

“Instead, they were cheated out of millions.”

Billups retired from the NBA as a player in 2014 and has been the head coach of the Trail Blazers since 2021. He was on the bench for the team’s first game of the season on Wednesday, a loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Rozier, 31, was the 16th overall pick by the Boston Celtics in the 2015 draft. He has averaged 13.9 points per game playing for three teams over his 11-year NBA career.