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Tech used in rigged poker games linked to mob and NBA

admin - Latest News - October 24, 2025
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NBC News’ Rob Wile and “Here’s the Scoop” co-host Brian Cheung discuss the technology alleged to have been used to execute a multistate, rigged poker operation involving NBA stars and organized crime families that sounds like it’s straight out of Hollywood.



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Oct. 24, 2025, 3:35 PM EDTBy David K. LiAssociates of four of New York’s infamous “five families” crime syndicates allegedly backed a multimillion-dollar poker con that used elaborate technology to cheat unsuspecting players — and brought rare, unappreciated light to the mob’s shadowy operations, officials said.Associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families were named in a sweeping indictment that also ensnared Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, and one-time NBA journeyman Damon Jones, according to prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York.Federal authorities didn’t hesitate Thursday to pin the poker scam on La Cosa Nostra, showing that organized crime is still a modern law enforcement concern even after FBI operations in the 1980s and 1990s seemed to decimate the five families.”The mafia … it’s still a thing,” said Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs for the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. The mob works best when the public knows less about the people involved, according to Schumacher, who called famed bosses like the late Dapper Don, John Gotti, an “aberration.” “They didn’t want the general public to be well-versed in their business. The one guy who kind of defied that whole thing was John Gotti because he just believed that he was untouchable,” Schumacher said.A dozen mafia associates played a role in the poker scam, prosecutors said.Ernest Aiello and Julius “Jay” Ziliani were linked to the Bonanno crime family.Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella, Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh, John Gallo, Joseph Lanni, Nicholas Minucci, Angelo Ruggiero Jr. were associates of the Gambino crime family Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino and Lee Fama were identified as associates of the Genovese crime family.Seth Trustman was linked to the Lucchese crime family.And Thomas “Juice” Gelardo was called an associate of the Bonanno crime family and later an associate of the Genovese crime family, according to the indictment.Gambling “is an easy pinch” and bread-and-butter income source for the mob, the author and former Gambino mobster Louis Ferrante told NBC News.”I wasn’t at all surprised,” Ferrante said. “Gambling has been a mafia mainstay for the last 100 years. With all the RICO indictments that put so many people away for the rest of their lives (in the 1980s and 90s), the mob has sort of scaled back and they stuck with loan sharking and gambling because if you get busted, as long as there’s no violence involved, nobody’s beat up or threatened, it’s a slap on the wrist.”He added: “These guys could do a nickel maybe in the can, as opposed to doing 30, 40 years or life sentences.” Organized crime soldiers and associates are busted all the time but rarely make news, said Seth Zuckerman, New York criminal defense lawyer and former Brooklyn prosecutor.“It’s not what it used to be, but it definitely still exists,” Zuckerman said. “In underground poker games and things like that, where you need protection, you need a source of cash, the mob still has its involvement.”With legal online gambling, users are required to put up all of the money before they place a bet but the crime families operate outside of the rules by acting as an intermediary, offering people the ability to place bets on credit.”There’s still a need for that,” Zuckerman said. “There are people who want to bet on credit, which as you know with legalized operations, you really can’t do. So that’s part of the mob’s territory.” Federal action against Billups and Jones spill into two separate indictments covering poker and insider sports betting information.The alleged mafia members are only tied to the alleged poker scheme. But the mob does have a long history of involvement in sports betting and poker.The most famous sports betting scandal in American history, when the 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series, was allegedly engineered by gambler Arnold Rothstein, a mentor to early Genovese boss Charlie “Lucky” Luciano.The Colombo crime family had alleged connections to NBA officials in the 1990s and early 2000s.Even though sports betting is largely legal in most states, that still didn’t stop several Gambino soldiers from taking illegal bets in New York, state prosecutors said last year in a 17-person indictment.The Lucchese crime family had alleged ties to a racketeering, gambling and money laundering operation out of New Jersey poker rooms that was taken down early this year, officials said.The New York City area’s “five families” include the four mentioned in the indictment plus the Colombo crime family.FBI Director Kash Patel said federal law enforcement had “entered and executed a system of justice against La Cosa Nostra to include the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families.” Old-fashioned mob muscle ensured victims paid up from their losses in rigged games, officials said.”With respect to poker games held in the New York City area, members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Crime Families, used threats and intimidation to assure payments of debts” in games organized by defendants Awawdeh, Trustman, Zhen Hu and Robert Stroud, the indictment said.All crime families involved “received proceeds” from the crooked games, the indictment said.The mafia’s alleged use of cutting-edge technology that included hidden cameras and X-rays shouldn’t surprise anyone, Ferrante said, because a mob boss can reach out to experts as easily as anyone else.”The mob moves with the technology,” Ferrante said. “Don’t think that some capo, ‘Frankie nine fingers,’ or ‘Joe the butcher’ is making these moves. They’re getting some geek who knows technology and he’s doing it for them.” And poker is no different from fuel, concrete and construction when it comes to wise guy involvement, according to Ferrante, the author of “Borgata: Clash of Titans: a History of the American Mafia.””The mob only has multiple families involved when it becomes something like gasoline, when they’re doing multimillions of dollars,” Ferrante said. “Concrete, when they were pouring all the concrete in New York; the windows, when they were putting in all the new energy efficient windows in the 90s; that’s (when) all the families get involved because it’s so big and there’s so much money involved that you can’t, one family can’t keep it to themselves. “He added: “So when you see four (of the five crime) families involved, you know that this is a huge racket.”David K. LiSenior Breaking News Reporter
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Oct. 24, 2025, 2:56 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 24, 2025, 3:00 PM EDTBy Alexandra MarquezOne day before early voting begins in the New York mayoral race, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani condemned the “racist, baseless” attacks he’s faced in recent days, saying the attacks exemplify the islamophobia Muslims all over New York face every day.”I have sought to be the candidate fighting for every single New Yorker, not simply the Muslim candidate,” Mamdani told reporters gathered outside of a mosque in the Bronx. “I thought that if I could build a campaign of universality, I could define myself as the leader I aspire to be, one representing every New Yorker, no matter their skin color or religion, no matter where they were born.””And I thought that if I behaved well enough or bit my tongue enough in the face of racist, baseless attacks, all while returning back to my central message, it would allow me to be more than just my faith,” Mamdani added, appearing to grow emotional. “I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough.” Mamdani, who currently represents parts of Queens in the New York State Assembly, would be the city’s first Muslim mayor.His comments come one day after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo —who lost to Mamdani in the June Democratic primary and is now running as an independent — faced criticism for remarks he made about Mamdani on a radio program.On Thursday, Cuomo appeared to agree with a conservative radio host who said that Mamdani would cheer if a terror attack happened while he was mayor.A Cuomo campaign spokesperson later told NBC News that Cuomo did not agree with the radio host’s comment.Earlier this week, in the final debate ahead of the Nov. 4 mayoral election, Mamdani defended himself against attacks from Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa that he didn’t have a strong plan to combat antisemitism in New York City.The city needs “a leader who takes [antisemitism] seriously, who roots it out of these five boroughs, not one who weaponizes it as a means by which to score political points on a debate stage,” Mamdani told viewers.He also accused the other candidates of accusing him of antisemitism in part because he’s a Muslim.After Sliwa accused Mamdani of supporting a “global jihad,” Mamdani said, “I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad. That is not something that I have said, and that continues to be ascribed to me. And frankly, I think much of it has to do with the fact that I am the first Muslim candidate to be on the precipice of winning this election.”“They view you as the arsonist who fanned the flames of antisemitism,” Sliwa had told Mamdani earlier in the debate, referring to members of his own family. “They cannot suddenly accept the fact that you’re coming like a firefighter and you’re going to put out these flames.”His identity as a Muslim is something Mamdani also referenced during a podcast released this week.“I do think that Andrew Cuomo, there are a number of things that he has said or done that he would not have done if I was not a Muslim candidate,” Mamdani told the hosts of the “Flagrant” podcast.In his speech Friday, Mamdani also decried what he described as a post-9/11 rise in Islamaphobia in New York City.”For as long as we have lived, we have known that no matter what anyone says, there are still certain forms of hate that are acceptable in this city,” he said. “Islamophobia is not seen as inexcusable.””In an era of ever-diminishing bipartisanship, it seems that islamophobia has emerged as one of the few areas of agreement,” he added.Mamdani also thanked his supporters who have “rushed to my defense over these past few days,” but said he was thinking, “of those Muslims in this city who do not have the luxury of being the Democratic nominee.”Mamadani has faced allegations of antisemitism for months, even before he became the Democratic nominee for mayor.The allegations largely centered on his criticism of Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza, where over 60,000 people have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, according to health authorities in Gaza.He has also faced criticism over his refusal earlier in the race to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada.”Cuomo referenced this during Wednesday’s debate, telling Mamdani, “You’re the savior of the Jewish people? You won’t denounce ‘globalize the intifada,’ which means ‘kill Jews.'”Mamdani said in June that he didn’t use the phrase, but that mayors shouldn’t “police speech.” The New York Times reported in July that Mamdani said he would “discourage” use of the phrase moving forward.Mamdani has also sought to find commonality with the Jewish community, meeting with Jewish leaders, courting Hassidic voters in Yiddish and attending Rosh Hashanah celebrations.In his speech on Friday, Mamdani said that he has learned over the last few years that for Muslims in New York City, “safety could only be found in the shadows of our city [and] it is in those shadows alone where Muslims could embrace their full identities.””If we were to emerge from those shadows … it is in those shadows that we must leave our faith. These are lessons that so many Muslim New Yorkers have been taught again and again,” Mamdani said. “Over these last few days, these lessons have become the closing messages of Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa and Eric Adams.”Adams, the incumbent mayor of New York City, suspended his independent campaign for governor in September and endorsed Cuomo on Thursday.The mayoral election is on Nov. 4, with early voting starting in the five boroughs on Saturday.Alexandra MarquezAlexandra Marquez is a politics reporter for NBC News.
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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 16, 2025, 9:10 PM EDTBy Allan SmithAndrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani both opened Thursday’s New York City mayoral debate by saying a future headline about their first year in office would celebrate lowering costs for New Yorkers. The next 50 minutes of the debate — aired on NBC New York and Telemundo New York, in partnership with Politico — turned into an all-out brawl over issues including crime, the war in Gaza and President Donald Trump as the candidates tore into each other in deeply personal ways.During one back and forth focused on which candidate has the right experience for the job, Mamdani, a state assemblyman, blasted Cuomo, the former governor, for his handling of nursing homes during the Covid pandemic. Cuomo, who resigned from office amid allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies, had just said the mayorship was “no job for on the job training.”“What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity,” Mamdani said. “And what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.”Democratic nominee Mamdani and Cuomo, running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary in June, were joined on stage by Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, with the three clashing over how to handle the police department and mental health calls, the education system, taxes and the business climate in New York City.Mamdani, a self-described Democratic socialist, enters the stretch run of the election with a commanding lead, though Cuomo has closed some ground since Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the contest.Trump has sought to influence the outcome of the race and has repeatedly threatened to withhold federal funding from New York should Mamdani wins the contest next month. And the president’s influence in New York was a central discussion of the debate.Each candidate was asked when they had last spoken with the president, with Cuomo saying he believed it was after the attempt on Trump’s life in 2024. Sliwa said it had been many years, while Mamdani said he never has never spoken to Trump.But Mamdani did express willingness to work with Trump to lower costs — before attacking Cuomo over reports that he had discussed the race with the president.“I don’t need the president’s assistance,” Mamdani said. “And what I’d tell the president is, if he ever wants to come for New Yorkers in the way that he has been, he’s going to have to get through me as the next mayor of the city.”Cuomo said he never had such a conversation with Trump and talked up past “bloody battles” with the president during Covid.“I’d like to avoid them,” Cuomo said.Mamdani also attacked Cuomo for not taking a strong enough line in defending state Attorney General Letitia James, who was recently indicted on federal charges after Trump had called for her prosecution.“I said political weaponization of the justice system is wrong,” Cuomo said. “Both sides do it. It’s wrong when Donald Trump does it. It’s wrong when they did it to [James] Comey. It’s wrong when Comey did it to Hillary” Clinton.Sliwa cut in and said New Yorkers will suffer if either Cuomo or Mamdani takes on Trump.“Look, you can be tough, but you can’t be tough if it’s going to cost people desperately needed federal funds,” Sliwa said. “Zohran Mamdani, the president has already said it’s going to take $7 billion out of the budget right from the start if you’re elected mayor. People are going to suffer in this city, people who need those federal funds. What I would do is sit and negotiate.”While Sliwa sought his openings in the debate, Mamdani and Cuomo were the main event, often ignoring his jibes — except to agree when the Republican was attacking the other candidate.Democratic dividesMeanwhile, Mamdani and Cuomo battled over who is a real Democrat, too. Mamdani said that voters who believe there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican parties should vote for Cuomo, while voters who want a mayor to stand up to Trump and his donors should back him.Cuomo then said Mamdani isn’t a Democrat, focusing on his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America and accused him of not voting for former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall. (Mamdani said voters should leave their presidential primary ballot blank if they disagree with then-President Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.)“If you want to look for me on the ballot, you’ll find me as the Democrat,” Mamdani said.The war in Gaza took up a significant portion of the debate. Mamdani has accused Israel of carrying out a “genocide” and, in a Fox News interview on Wednesday, declined to say whether Hamas should forfeit their weapons following the recent ceasefire agreement.“Of course I believe that they should lay down their arms, I’m proud to be one of the first elected officials in the state who called for a ceasefire and calling for a ceasefire means ceasing fire,” Mamdani said. “That means all parties have to cease fire and put down their weapons.”“And the reason that we call for that is not only for the end of the genocide, but also an unimpeded access of humanitarian aid,” Mamdani said. “I, like many New Yorkers, am hopeful that this ceasefire will hold.”Cuomo responded that Mamdani is refusing to “denounce Hamas” and separately said the state assemblyman was speaking in “code” with his answer — and that code signaling that Israel “does not have a right to exist as a Jewish state.” Mamdani responded that Cuomo was acting as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “legal defense team during the course of this genocide.”He added that conversations with Jewish New Yorkers had led him to discourage the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a phrase he said he does not use.“And what I’m looking to do as the first Muslim mayor of this city is to ensure that we bring every New Yorker together, Jewish New Yorkers, Muslim New Yorkers, every single person that calls the city home, they understand they won’t just be protected, but they will belong,” he said.Cuomo attacked Mamdani for not explicitly denouncing the phrase.“He is a divisive personality across the board,” Cuomo said.Handling crime and costsOn crime, Mamdani said he had spoken to police officers to apologize for past anti-police postings, and he said that he is not running on those ideas, attacking Cuomo for not focusing on his actual plans. Cuomo said Mamdani “doesn’t like the police” and “that’s why he won’t hire more police.”“When everyone else says, we need more police,” Cuomo said. “He wants to use social workers on domestic violence calls, which are very dangerous, and he’s told you what he thinks. He thinks the police are racist, wicked, corrupt, and a threat to public safety.”Mamdani said that as a state assemblyman he learned “that to deliver justice means to also deliver safety, and that means leading a city where you recognize the bravery of the men and women who join the NYPD and put their lives on the line.”“It means representing the Muslims who were illegally surveilled in my district and the Black and brown New Yorkers who have been victims of police brutality,” Mamdani said.The second half of the debate featured more discussion on cost of living and affordability. Each candidate was asked what they paid in groceries and rent: $2,300 for Mamdani, $3,900 for Sliwa and $7,800 for Cuomo.Cuomo was deeply critical of Mamdani’s plans for affordable housing and free bus service while talking up his own experience as governor and secretary of Housing and Urban Development.“I just have to say it’s been an hour and 20 minutes of this debate, and we haven’t heard Governor Cuomo say the word affordability,” Mamdani said. “That’s why he lost the primary.” Mamdani criticized Cuomo for having the support of billionaire hedge fund executive Bill Ackman, to which Cuomo said “there are a lot of New Yorkers who support me, and there are a lot of Jewish New Yorkers who support me because they think you’re antisemitic.”“So it’s not about Trump or Republicans,” Cuomo said. “It’s about you.”The two candidates did have one point of agreement when asked to identify the best-ever mayor of New York City. Both shouted out former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.“We agree,” Mamdani said.Allan SmithAllan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.
October 22, 2025
Oct. 21, 2025, 5:38 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 21, 2025, 6:12 PM EDTBy Scott Wong and Kyle StewartWASHINGTON — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won her late father’s seat in a special election nearly one month ago.Johnson, R-La., has said he will seat Grijalva once Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government. But the two parties haven’t been talking for weeks, and there is no indication when the shutdown might end.House Dems march to demand Johnson swear in Grijalva00:56The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson last week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents living in Arizona’s 7th District of congressional representation. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. House, as well as the House clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”As he left the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”Mayes, he said, has “no jurisdiction.”Grijalva and congressional Democrats have been holding news conferences on Capitol Hill, doing TV interviews and staging protests outside Johnson’s office to try to pressure the speaker to relent. But Mayes’ move escalates the standoff and gets the courts involved.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and other Democrats have argued that Johnson is delaying seating Grijalva because she represents the 218th — and final — signature on a discharge petition needed to force a House vote to compel the Justice Department to release all of its files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.Johnson has repeatedly denied that the delay has anything to do with the Epstein files. The speaker has said he is happy to swear in Grijalva as soon as the government, now on the 21st day of the shutdown, reopens.And Johnson accused Mayes, a Democrat who is running for re-election in 2026, of seeking publicity following a public clash he had with Arizona’s two Democratic senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, over the Grijalva issue earlier this month.“So, yet another Democrat politician from Arizona is trying to get national publicity. So now it’s the state AG, who’s going to sue me because … Rep.-elect Grijalva is not yet sworn in,” Johnson told reporters Monday.He said he is following what he called the “Pelosi precedent,” noting that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took 25 days to administer the oath of office to then-Rep.-elect Julia Letlow, R-La. Letlow won a 2021 special election to fill the seat of her husband, who died of Covid complications days before he was set to be sworn into office. The House was out on recess following her election, amid the pandemic, and she was sworn in the week that it returned to session.“So I will administer the oath to [Grijalva], I hope, on the first day we come back to legislative session. I’m willing and anxious to do that,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol.Grijalva handily won her special election on Sept. 23, 28 days ago, and just four days after the House voted to pass its short-term government funding bill and left town.Johnson continued: “In the meantime, instead of doing TikTok videos, she should be serving her constituents. She could be taking their calls. She could be directing them, trying to help them through the crisis that the Democrats have created by shutting down the government.”Grijalva is the daughter of former Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a progressive power broker and former Natural Resources Committee chairman who died in March after serving more than two decades in the House.”There is so much that cannot be done until I am sworn in,” Grijalva said Tuesday at a news conference with Jeffries. “While we’re getting a lot of attention for not being sworn in, I’d rather get the attention for doing my job.”Once she is sworn in, Grijalva is expected to quickly sign the bipartisan discharge petition — led by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — which would allow them to bypass Johnson’s leadership team and force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.For months, the Epstein issue has been a nagging headache for both Johnson and President Donald Trump. Many of the president’s MAGA supporters have called for transparency and the release of all of the documents related to the case. On Tuesday, Johnson pointed out that the House Oversight Committee is investigating the matter and has released more than 43,000 pages of documents from DOJ and the Epstein estate. “The bipartisan House Oversight Committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought — and much more,” Johnson, standing alongside Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said Tuesday. In an interview in the Capitol, Khanna said Johnson should just swear Grijalva in and hold the vote on the Epstein files because the issue is not going away.“They gotta swear in Adelita Grijalva. I don’t know why they’re delaying the inevitable. They’re kind of hoping this story dies and they get it out of the front pages, but then it comes roaring back once we get the votes,” Khanna told NBC News. “I wish we could just swear Adelita Grijalva in and have a vote on the release of the Epstein files.”Democrats are expected to win another vacant House seat in the coming weeks. On Nov. 4, voters will choose someone to fill the vacancy left by the unexpected death in March of Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, who represented a heavily Democratic district.If Democrats prevail in that special election, it would trim the GOP majority in the House to 219-215 and mean Johnson could only lose a single GOP defection on any vote.Scott WongScott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News. Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.Julie Tsirkin and Gabrielle Khoriaty contributed.
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