ORLANDO, Fla. — A pair of long-running federal gambling investigations into “tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery” led to the arrests Thursday of Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and dozens of others, including two former NBA players and New York mafia members.

Two wire-fraud conspiracy indictments were unsealed in Brooklyn federal court and announced at a major news conference led by the FBI director.

One case alleges illegal sports betting on NBA stats involving six defendants, including Rozier and a former Miami Heat player, Damon Jones. The other alleges “rigged” poker games involving 31 defendants, including several members of New York crime families, as well as Jones and another former NBA player, Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers.

The illegal sports betting and poker game schemes were unveiled during a Thursday morning press conference held in New York, featuring FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella Jr.

“My message to defendants who have been rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out,” Nocella said.

“This is an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spanned the course of years,” Patel added. “The fraud is mind-boggling. ... We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery.”

Rozier was arrested on charges in the sports betting case in Orlando, where the Heat stayed overnight following Wednesday’s 125-121 season-opening loss to the Magic. The Heat were scheduled to travel to Memphis on Thursday afternoon for Friday’s matchup against the Grizzlies.

Nocella said the illegal sports betting scheme unfolded between December 2022 and March 2024, involving “betting on inside non-public information about NBA athletes and teams.

“The non-public information included when specific players would be sitting out future games or when they would pull themselves out early for purported injuries or illnesses,” Nocella said. “They relied on corrupt individuals, including Jones and Rozier.”

Four teams were mentioned in the illegal sports gambling investigation as being bet on — the Charlotte Hornets, Los Angeles Lakers, Toronto Raptors, and Portland Trail Blazers. The Heat were not included on that list.

Each defendant in the illegal sports betting case, including Rozier, has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Rozier’s attorney James Trusty of Ifrah Law PLLC released a statement on his client’s arrest.

“We have represented Terry Rozier for over a year,” Trusty said in a statement sent to the Miami Herald. “A long time ago we reached out to these prosecutors to tell them we should have an open line of communication. They characterized Terry as a subject, not a target, but at 6 a.m. this morning they called to tell me FBI agents were trying to arrest him in a hotel.

“It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self surrender they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case. They appear to be taking the word of spectacularly in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case. Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”

Rozier, 31, has been under investigation as part of a probe connected to unusual betting activity surrounding a 2023 game while he was with the Charlotte Hornets.

According to the indictment filed in Brooklyn federal court, when Rozier was playing for the Hornets, he tipped off a friend that he was going to pull himself out of a March 2023 NBA game prematurely because of a supposed injury. The friend and others in his inner circle used the inside information and bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on the guard’s sub-par performance, the indictment says.

“Rozier’s early exit from the March 23 game and his related underperformance relative to his season averages for points, assists and three-pointers resulted in the success of numerous fraudulent wagers placed on [his] unders by the defendants and their co-conspirators,” the indictment said, noting that a week later the friend counted his cut of the betting proceeds with Rozier at the player’s home in Charlotte, N.C.

ESPN zeroed in on the sport betting scheme in July, when it reported that “a professional bettor placed 30 wagers in 46 minutes, all involving Terry Rozier in a 2023 NBA game.”

“On the morning of March 23, 2023, a bettor at a sportsbook in Biloxi, Mississippi, placed $13,759 in bets on the unders on Rozier’s statistics in a game that night between the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans,” according to the documents, which ESPN acquired through an open records request. “All 30 bets won, after Rozier, an eight-year veteran with the Hornets at the time, exited 10 minutes into the game, citing a foot issue.”

The game in question came on March 23, 2023, when Rozier was a member of the Hornets before he was traded to the Heat in January 2024.

Rozier totaled five points on 2-of-4 shooting from the field and 1-of-3 shooting on 3s, four rebounds, two assists and one steal in 9:34 before leaving the Hornets’ loss to the Pelicans early with a foot injury despite not being listed on the injury report prior to that March 2023 contest. He didn’t play again that season.

The NBA conducted an investigation on Rozier and did not find a violation of NBA rules before the FBI arrested Rozier months later.

“In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting activity related to Terry Rozier’s performance in a game between Charlotte and New Orleans,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said when the federal investigation into Rozier was made public in late January by The Wall Street Journal. “The league conducted an investigation and did not find a violation of NBA rules. We are now aware of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York related to this matter and have been cooperating with that investigation.”

The investigation into Rozier is part of a larger government probe that led to a criminal charge and lifetime ban from the NBA for former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter.

Rozier is on an expiring contract that pays him $26.6 million this season.

If Rozier is ruled ineligible by the NBA, his salary after such an NBA ruling would be removed from the Heat’s salary cap, luxury tax and tax aprons. The Heat are currently operating just $1.6 million below the NBA’s punitive luxury tax line, but they remain unclear if and when the NBA would deem Rozier ineligible amid the ongoing federal investigation.

Rozier, who was released on a bond after appearing in Orlando federal court on Thursday, now faces an arraignment in New York. He will remain away from the Heat in the wake of his arrest, but his contract will still count toward the Heat’s salary cap for now.

According to Central Florida’s CBS affiliate, Rozier had to put up his $6 million Florida property as collateral for bond. He appeared in court Thursday handcuffed and shackled at the ankles and was wearing a Hornets sweatshirt.

“We are in the process of reviewing the federal indictments announced today,” the NBA said in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups are being placed on immediate leave from their teams, and we will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities. We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”

The Heat declined to comment.

Rozier averaged 10.6 points per game on 39.1% shooting from the field and 29.5% shooting from 3-point range in 64 appearances last regular season with the Heat for one of the worst years of his NBA career. That’s the fewest points he has averaged and the worst field-goal percentage he has recorded in a season since his fourth NBA season in 2018-19, with Rozier’s 3-point percentage his worst for a season since his rookie year in 2015-16.

Rozier began last season as a Heat starter and was expected to be one of the team’s top offensive players, but he instead completely fell out of the Heat’s rotation toward the end of the season.

Rozier did not play in Wednesday’s season opener against the Magic in Orlando because of a coach’s decision. He was in uniform for the contest.

The Heat traded Kyle Lowry’s $29.7 million expiring contract and a first-round pick to the Hornets to land Rozier in the middle of the 2023-24 season. The Heat were unaware of any potential federal investigation into Rozier at the time of that trade, according to a league source.

Billups and Jones arrested

In the other gambling scheme announced Thursday, FBI agents arrested Billups and Jones — accused as participants of using “cheating technology” in illegal poker games that were staged in New York City, Las Vegas and Miami, among other cities, with the “support and protection” of members of New York crime families. Their victims, often wealthy players, lost about $7,150,000 between 2019 and 2025, according to the indictment.

Jones was also charged in the sports-betting case with Rozier. Jones played for 10 different teams during his NBA career, including the Heat during the 2004-05 season. Billups, who played for eight different NBA teams, has been the head coach of the Trail Blazers since 2021. The NBA placed Rozier and Billups on “immediate leave from their teams” in the wake of their arrests.

“The integrity of the game is paramount to NBA players, but so is the presumption of innocence, and both are hindered when player popularity is misused to gain attention,” the National Basketball Players Association said in a statement after the arrest of Billups, Jones and Rozier.

“We will ensure our members are protected and afforded their due process rights through this process.”

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