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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleOct. 24, 2025, 5:01 AM EDTBy Andrew Greif and Rohan NadkarniThe arrests of two well-known NBA figures Thursday in a nationwide federal investigation into internal gambling and high-tech scam poker — especially a sitting head coach and former Finals Most Valuable Player — have roiled the league, from players to front offices to agents, sources told NBC News.The arrests, particularly that of Hall of Famer and Portland head coach Chauncey Billups, altered the tenor of this week’s conversations around the NBA, whose new season had started only two days earlier.The mood, a front office executive for one team said, went from fanfare to “fear.”Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups after his federal court appearance in Portland, Ore., on Oct. 23, 2025.Jenny Kane / AP“Who else is involved?” the executive said. “It’s a nightmare for the league.”Reactions to the extraordinary news spread quickly, ranging from surprise to anger at the league itself, according to five people who work inside or closely with the NBA, all of whom were granted anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the matter.“Surprised they got caught,” a player agent said. “But not surprised, as [gambling] is happening everywhere.”Terry Rozier was indicted as part of an investigation into insider sports betting. A separate investigation into what law enforcement officials described as Mafia-organized rigged poker games led to charges for Billups. Jones was named in both indictments.“Shocking day,” Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle, who is also the president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, said Thursday before a game. Carlisle said he contacted Billups and his representatives to ask how Billups was doing but did not hear back. FBI: Mafia involved in NBA gambling scandal02:52“This is a very serious situation,” Carlisle said. “The irony, I guess, from my perspective, was yesterday was a day when our general counsel came down and read us all the regulations on gambling and warned our coaching staff, our players, our support staff about all these different things.”Billups’ attorney did not respond to a request for comment.Jones, in addition to the rigged poker games, was also accused of disclosing privileged information to bettors about the injury status of a player before a game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Milwaukee Bucks in February 2023. That player was LeBron James, according to multiple reports, though he is not named in the indictment or accused of any wrongdoing. Jones was also accused of telling the same bettors on Jan. 15, 2024, that another Lakers player would miss the game because of injury, before that knowledge was public. The only player fitting the indictment’s description is Anthony Davis. Coach Damon Jones looks on during the 2025 G League Elite Camp in Chicago on May 11.Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images fileBillups, while he is not named in the Rozier indictment, is seemingly implicated, however. The indictment refers to a person named “Co-Conspirator 8,” who is described as an Oregon resident who played in the NBA from 1997 to 2014 and has been a coach since 2021. (Billups was drafted in 1997 and last played in 2014, and he became a head coach in 2021.)Co-Conspirator 8 is accused of giving bettors inside information about a Trail Blazers game in March 2023, when Billups was their head coach. Co-Conspirator 8 is alleged to have told another defendant in the case that Portland would be “tanking” the game and that several of the team’s players would be held out with injuries. Other defendants in the case are alleged to have used the information to place bets against the Trail Blazers.The “fear” from the potential fallout, or expansion, of the investigations came after FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference that investigations into gambling continue and Christopher Reya, an FBI assistant director in charge of the New York field office, called the indictments “just the tip of the iceberg.”The league has dealt with gambling scandals before. Jontay Porter of the Toronto Raptors was banned for life last year for violating the league’s gambling rules after a league investigation determined he had disclosed information about his participation to bettors for financial gain. He later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court and is set to be sentenced in December. Last season, the NBA said in a statement that it was aware of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office related to Rozier.Official: Investigation into alleged gambling scheme dubbed ‘Operation Royal Flush’01:47A culture of gambling has existed in the NBA for years, multiple people said. Inside locker rooms, it is not uncommon to hear discussions of a recent game of poker or bourré, a trick-taking card game similar to spades that is popular among basketball players. A longtime team employee said that wagering and the competition that fueled it were so pervasive that nearly every team flight he was on had multiple high-dollar games taking place at once, often one between players and another between coaches. J.J. Redick, the Los Angeles Lakers’ head coach, who also played in the league for 15 years, once told a story on his podcast about nearly coming to blows with a teammate because of gambling. After he referred to bourré as the “greatest gambling game” because of how the pot can grow “exponentially,” Redick said “the closest I ever came to a teammate punching me” was over a card game on a team flight. In January 2010, former All-Star Gilbert Arenas was arrested in violation of gun control laws after he and a teammate, Javaris Crittenton, took firearms to the Washington Wizards’ locker room as a result of a gambling dispute. Arenas has since said the dispute started over a game of bourré. (Arenas avoided jail time but was sentenced to two years of supervised probation in that case.)A league source told NBC News it is not uncommon for players to separate into different groups based on their salaries. A younger player, for example, may not gamble right away with a superstar on a max contract. But as salaries have increased in the NBA — the league’s highest-paid player will make over $59 million this season — the stakes on team flights have only gotten higher. Outside of flights, players also often set up with or are invited to high-stakes poker games, with cities such as Los Angeles and Houston cited as popular for gamblers, according to a source. (Arenas was arrested in July as part of a separate Justice Department investigation into illegal poker games in the Los Angeles area. He has pleaded not guilty.)Redick, who has coached the Lakers since 2024, told reporters Thursday that the team had gone through meetings that day about the league’s anti-gambling rules. “It’s obviously on the front of everyone’s awareness,” Redick said. Although gambling and the NBA have long been intertwined, Thursday’s arrests put the league on a different type of alert, an agent said, because it involved not lower-level players but Rozier, who has made more than $150 million in his career, and someone with the stature of Billups, a former NBA Finals MVP who was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame only last year and is widely respected around the league. The Trail Blazers deferred comment to the NBA and announced that an assistant coach, Tiago Splitter, would assume head coaching responsibilities. The NBA first investigated Rozier after it was alerted in March 2023 to what a league spokesperson later said was unusual betting activity related to his performance. Such bets on individual occurrences during games, not on the outcomes of the games themselves — called “prop bets” — have become extremely popular. Concerned that such bets could also give players incentives to manipulate their performances for financial gain after Porter was banished last year, the NBA last year persuaded sportsbooks to no longer offer “under” bets for players on 10-day or two-way contracts, who generally make the least amount of money. Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, told NBC News on Thursday that Rozier had been “cleared by the NBA.” The league never went quite that far publicly, however, saying in January 2024 only that its investigation “did not find a violation of NBA rules.” Asked at a news conference in July about the NBA’s investigation and whether he was comfortable with the findings, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged that federal investigators “have more resources at their disposal than the league office does when we do an investigation.”However, because many interpreted Rozier to have been cleared by the league, only to be arrested later, a high-ranking team executive said Thursday that he was concerned that “people will lose faith in the NBA’s ability to investigate these things.” The executive added that he, too, had become dubious about what the NBA’s investigatory arm would turn up from investigations it handles or outsources to outside law firms, such as the ongoing probe into whether the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented the salary cap.“This thing is not about Terry Rozier or Chauncey Billups,” the executive said. “It’s about that we trust the NBA to uphold the integrity of what’s happening on the basketball court.” The NBA said in a statement Thursday that it continues to review federal indictments and allegations, which it took “with the utmost seriousness.” Billups was arrested less than nine hours after Portland’s season-opening season-opening loss at home, a game notably attended by the team’s current owner and a financier in the process of buying the franchise. Billups was asked whether the change in ownership added pressure to his job.“I do the best I can,” he said, “and let the chips fall where they may.”Andrew GreifAndrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital. Rohan NadkarniRohan Nadkarni is a sports reporter for NBC News. 
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Oct. 24, 2025, 9:29 AM EDTBy Rob WileThe Social Security Administration announced Friday that benefit payments will increase 2.8% next year to account for the higher cost of living.The 2026 cost-of-living adjustment, knowns as the COLA, represents an increase over last year’s 2.5% figure, but it is lower than the historical average of about 3.7%. Individual retirement benefits will climb an average of about $56 per month, the agency said in a statement. The COLA is typically calculated using benchmark inflation data from July, August, and September. While pandemic-era inflation has ebbed since hitting a high of nearly 10% in 2022, households across the U.S. continue to report feeling price pressures.Many senior citizens’ advocates say that that demographic has been hit particularly hard — and that the way the annual Social Security adjustment is made has become part of the problem. Since it was first instituted in 1975, the annual adjustment has been calculated using a somewhat obscure inflation index that the advocates say gives inadequate weight to items that seniors tend to spend a greater share of their earnings on, like medical care, prescription drugs, rent, and home energy costs. “The index doesn’t necessarily reflect the spending habits of older adults,” said Jessica Johnston, senior director of the Center for Economic Well-Being at the National Council on Aging (NCOA). By her estimates, she said, a 4% adjustment would more accurately reflect these costs.More than one-in-five Americans currently receive some form of social security assistance, including approximately 58 million Americans aged 65 and over. Seniors have historically been more likely to report worsening consumer sentiment, according to the University of Michigan’s closely watched monthly survey. The gap in sentiment has narrowed in recent years — but other data suggest that hard times are getting harder for the most vulnerable seniors. Between 2018 and 2023, older Americans were the only demographic age group that saw an increase in its poverty rates — though their overall rate remains the lowest. An NCOA report published earlier this month found that mortality rates among older adults in the bottom 60% of wealth were nearly double those of older adults in the top 20%. And individuals in the bottom-20% of wealth died nine years earlier on average than those in the top 20%. The NCOA also estimates that 45% of older-adult households — more than 19 million — do not have the income needed to cover basic living costs based on cost-of-living data from its proprietary Elder Index. And a full 80%, or about 34 million senior households, would be unable to weather a major shock such as widowhood, serious illness, or the need for long-term care.Economic insecurity has shown to be particularly acute for aging minorities. Some 43% of Black and 44% of Hispanic adults aged 65 and up have incomes that are below 200% of the federal poverty line, according to 2022 U.S. Census data cited by the National Council on Aging.Johnston said there is a commonly held belief that older Americans have vast wealth holdings — especially those from the post-World War II Baby Boom generation — and are more likely to be financially secure than other groups. But that’s not the whole story, he story.Many members of the generation that immediately preceded the Baby Boomers, known as the Silent Generation, are still around — and possess only a fraction of the same level of financial security as their immediate successors, according to Federal Reserve data. Silent Generation members own total assets worth approximately $20 trillion — compared with approximately $85 trillion for Baby Boomers.Individuals are also living longer than ever before, Johnston said. Yet while some report overall steady levels of well-being as they age, others are “aging into poverty,” Johnston said. Rob WileRob Wile is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering breaking business stories for NBCNews.com.
November 8, 2025
Nov. 8, 2025, 11:07 AM ESTBy Freddie ClaytonLONDON — It’s been a strange sort of prison break: no daring escapes, no Hollywood getaways — just inmates quietly released, by mistake, onto the streets of Britain.What once might have been an isolated blunder comes at an unwelcome time in a country strained by rising prices, stagnant wages and crumbling public services.One man, an Algerian sex offender, was arrested in London on Friday after being freed in error nine days earlier; another, a British national and convicted fraudster, accidentally released from the same prison shortly afterward and turned himself in on Thursday.Their cases followed the mistaken release of a convicted sex offender from a separate prison in October, which sparked a three-day manhunt before he was rearrested.At least four prisoners released in error over the past year remain at large, the BBC reports. More than 260 were wrongly released in England and Wales in the year to March, official data shows — more than double the figure the year before.Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary David Lammy said on X Friday that he was “appalled at the rate of releases in error,” and had ordered “tough new release checks, launched an investigation, and started overhauling archaic prison systems.”He told Parliament on Wednesday that the opposition Conservative Party, whose 14-year spell in government was ended by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year, had “left our prisons on the brink of collapse entirely.”But the recent litany of errors coincides with the ruling Labour Party battling its own economic constraints and record-setting unpopularity.British prisons have been in a state of crisis for several years, with the prison population more than doubling in size since 1990, while staffing and infrastructure struggle to keep pace.The Algerian offender, Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, was mistakenly let out on Oct. 29, though police say they weren’t informed until nearly a week later. He was rearrested for being unlawfully at large and on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker in connection with an earlier incident.As officers bundled him into a van, he offered his own verdict on the system that lost track of him: “Look at the justice of the U.K., they release people by mistake,” he said in a video aired by NBC News’ British partner Sky News.It’s a throwaway line, but it lands with an uncomfortable truth. In a country where little seems to function as it should — from the courts to the National Health Service to the trains — even the prisons can’t quite manage to keep the doors locked.Years of budget cuts are “catching up” with Britain’s public services, according to Glen O’Hara, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University.“The whole system of social care, for instance, is completely overwhelmed,” he told NBC News on Saturday, adding that Britain’s prisons had been swamped by a large number of short prison sentences.“It’s just overwhelming the system that can’t cope economically with all these numbers,” he said.Last summer, the men’s prison system was nearly filled to capacity with only a hundred or so empty places, a crisis that triggered the government’s emergency release scheme, allowing some inmates to leave after serving 40% of their sentence instead of the usual 50%. Introduced to ease overcrowding, the policy has since seen nearly 40,000 prisoners released early, Ministry of Justice figures show.Staffing issues have also plagued the services. In the year to June, nearly 13% of staff left British prisons, according to data from the Prison and Probation Service.Prison officers said a clerical error meant there was no warrant from the court to hold Kaddour-Cherif, and he was let go. William Smith, the convicted fraudster, was released as a result of a clerical error at the court level, the BBC reports.Wandsworth prison, where Smith and Kaddour-Cherif were released, was built in 1851 to house fewer than 1,000 prisoners. An August 2024 report by the prison’s independent monitoring board found inmate numbers had grown to 1,513.“Wings were chaotic and staff across most units were unable to confirm where all prisoners were during the working day,” the report said.The Victorian-era prison, one of many still in use dating back to the 1800s, has previously been the scene of high-profile escapes. Wandsworth made headlines in 2023 when former British soldier Daniel Khalife escaped by clinging to the underside of a lorry while awaiting trial for espionage and terrorism offenses.A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said that the recent cases “further expose the scale of the crisis in our prisons we inherited,” adding: “This will not be fixed overnight, but we are using every possible lever to bear down on these errors.”For all the headlines and investigations, the mistakes continue to pile up in a country struggling to hold itself together, one unlocked gate at a time.Freddie ClaytonFreddie Clayton is a freelance journalist based in London. 
September 23, 2025
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