Dan Mitchinson: US correspondent on NBA poker rigging arrests

An NBA player and coach are among dozens of people arrested in an FBI investigation into rigged, mafia-linked poker games.

Miami Heat's Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups were named as those arrested.

US correspondent Dan Mitchinson says the NBA stars were used as bait to draw players to the table with the rigged game.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dan Mitchinson, US correspondent with US. Hello Dan, Hello Heather
oh Man, how's this news going down about the NBA?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Boy, this is like a made for TV movie.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
I mean, the NBA players and coaches are among dozens
of people that have been arrested into illegal sports betting
and rigged mafia linked poker games. And so you've got
players from like the Miami Heat and the head coach
of the Portland Trailblazers were named earlier today by federal prosecutors.
There were thirty one people charged, and they're saying that

(00:34):
these guys were involved with four maybe five major crime
families in New York to lure victims to play these
rigged poker games with high profile sports stars, and they
stole millions of dollars while they were doing it.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Oh so were the NBA players sort of like the
bite to get people to the table.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
That's what it appears to be. And then the mafia
allegedly used this technology like contact lenses and glasses that
could read the pre marked cards. They had a table
that could sort of X ray things. I mean it really,
I can guarantee you that somebody right now in Hollywood
is writing this up for a made for TV or
a big screen movie right now, and this has been

(01:11):
going on it it looks like for a couple of years,
back in twenty twenty three and last year.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
And how did the contact lenses work.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
I don't know. I've been looking up that. I mean,
I would think that.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
From what I've seen in movies and from documentaries that
they are able to spot. It's like when you go
in with those lights, fluorescent lights into a crime scene
and you can tell where there's been blood or human
remains on the floor where.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
You can't see with the naked eye. That's what I'm guessing.
These contact lenses are able to see with the cards Jaz.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
That's full on. And they were like they were cheating
these people out of millions at a time, right it
was super liquidor allegedly it was.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
It was a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Ah Okay. Now, Donald Trump doesn't sound like he's shy
at all about people about blowing people just out of
the water.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Uh no, No, he says, he's not going to ask
for a declaration of war and these are strikes against
rug traffickers and he's not going to go to Congress
without it. He says, well, he's going to notify Congress
before beginning any operations, but he says this plan isn't
going to get any pushback right now. And I think

(02:13):
he said, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, he said, I think
we're just doing this to kill people that are bringing
drugs into the country. Okay, we're going to kill them.
You know, they're going to be like Kama dead. So
a very different presidential way, I guess of getting his
point across in terms of how he was describing it.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
And so, what was the point of the b one
bomber that he's seemed over there?

Speaker 3 (02:32):
I think it's those things are often used for surveillance purposes,
you know, and a show piece right now. They're able
to fly in and able to detect things on the
ground without being detected themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, so it's not so much about dropping the bombs.
It's actually about just watching what's going on.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Well it is, yeah, but you know what, those things
can also drop bombs as well too, So I mean
they've got, you know, several things that they can do
in several reasons obviously that he's probably sending them over there.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Now Listen, why the shock about the destruction of the
East Wing, because I thought that this was always what
was going to happen.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Well, I mean, it's you have to go through certain
hoops to do something like this. For instance, you're supposed
to get the approval of the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
and they were saying, hold on for a second, before
you demolish this thing, we need to go through the
planning purposes. There is a public review process which the
President did not go through. And then you've got the

(03:29):
price tag, which has gone upy one hundred million dollars.
This is all going to cost three hundred million dollars.
They're going to redo the ballroom and they're going to
expand it. This is going to be bigger than the
actual White House. They're going to make a bunker underneath it.
They're going to redo the East Wing in the Office
of the First Lady. And the President says, we're going
to modernize this. We need to, and some of these
things haven't been modernized since I think World War Two.

(03:51):
But the thing is, it's a price tag and it's
a part of history that he just demolished without going
through the proper steps. And like he said, this is
in tax payer Mount East all this is private donations
and private donors, but I mean it's still the people's house.
When you do something like this, it just feels a
little less like the people's house.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
I think I see what you're saying. Hey, thank you
very much, Dan, appreciate it. Dan Mitchison, US correspondent. For
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