An alleged gambling ring made up of mafiosos and NBA legend Chauncey Billups is accused of using high-tech equipment like smart contact lenses to cheat fat cats out of millions.
The bombshell bust saw agents move to arrest Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, and 32 others on Wednesday—the culmination of a years-long probe that determined notorious crime families, the ex-hooper, and others conspired to steal millions.
Billups was allegedly used as celebrity bait to lure wealthy individuals into backroom poker games, where U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella says gamblers were then seated at an “X-ray table,” had their cards shuffled by machines that could read the deck, and contested against a “rigged” system complete with secret cameras and signals.
Nocella said the poker nights were set up to make their targets feel they were part of a legitimate game, even though everyone else at the table was in on the scam.
To ensure their winnings, Nocella said the mafia’s table allowed an off-site operator to read cards as they lay face down on the table.
They also allegedly used a “poker chip tray analyzer,” which read their target’s hand using a hidden camera, as well as “special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards.”
Nocella did not elaborate about the specific tools allegedly used, but said each is known to be utilized by the Bonano, Gambino, and Genovese crime families.
An indictment obtained by the Daily Beast further alleged that the group also made use of “card analyzers,” which “utilized technology loaded onto decoy cellular telephones that could surreptitiously detect which cards were on the table.”
So-called “spy” and “smart” contact lenses are available in various prototype forms in 2025. An academic journal published this year said lenses being developed will allow users to “perceive multiple infrared wavelengths,” see in the dark, and even “transmit messages, similar to a visual Morse Code,” reports Outkick.
These smart contact lenses have embedded computer circuitry that allows you to focus at long distances and display data with simple eye movements pic.twitter.com/E7VlMd0hqd
— Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) October 7, 2022
The Dubai-based company Xpanceo brags on its website that its “smart” lenses allow “advanced real-time health monitoring, comprehensive practical recommendations, superpowers like night vision and zoom, and cutting-edge privacy and security measures.”
While the exact technology allegedly used in the crime is unclear, Nocella broke down how the scam was carried out in a news conference.
“They used off-the-shelf shuffling machines that had been secretly altered in order to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information to an off-site operator,” he said. “The off-site operator sent the information via cell phone back to a co-conspirator at the table, and that person at the table was known as the quarterback.”
Nocella continued, “The quarterback then signaled secretly the information he had received from others to others at the table, and together, they used that information in order to win their games and cheat the victims.”
That was not the only detail straight out of a Hollywood film. Nocella said that the mobsters would then resort to violence if the victims did not immediately pay off their debts.
“Some of the defendants and their co-conspirators also committed acts of violence, including the gunpoint robbery of a person to obtain a rigged shuffling machine, and extortions that were perpetrated against victims in order to ensure that they repaid their gambling debts,” he said.
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