Mafia returns to center stage in NBA betting scandal that included rigged poker games

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — Decades after a crackdown by prosecutors decimated the ranks of the New York Mafia, the indictment of an NBA coach, a player and nearly three dozen others in a betting scandal highlighted the mob’s persistence and adaptability to changing times and technology.

Four of New York’s five organized crime families allegedly participated in the sophisticated rigging of high-stakes poker games that one investigator said were “reminiscent of a Hollywood movie.”

The mobsters are accused of pocketing some of the $7 million that was fleeced from unsuspecting victims who were drawn to poker tables in Las Vegas, Miami, Manhattan and Long Island’s seaside playground for the rich and famous.

Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner said the indictments offered a reminder that La Cosa Nostra is “still very real” and that like any organization that has been attacked, “the mob has adjusted.”

Brooklyn case reveals Mafia is less visible but still alive

The mob has shrunk considerably since the days when John Gotti Sr. ran the Gambino family, once one of the most powerful and feared crime organizations in the U.S.

Back then, the dapper Gotti smiled and waved to courthouse spectators, winning the moniker of “The Teflon Don” from New York’s tabloid newspapers after a string of acquittals.

The Mafia and its violent mystique were a cultural phenomenon, featured in films such as “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas,” which paid tribute to a brazen $6 million robbery at Kennedy International Airport, and later in the television hit “The Sopranos.”

In the 1980s, federal prosecutors, including future New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, launched a crackdown, using racketeering laws that carried life sentences and capitalizing on an erosion of the Mafia’s code of silence.

Dozens of “made men” went to prison, and the mob structure built around social clubs was largely dismantled. Gotti, who was eventually convicted, died of cancer in 2002 while serving a life sentence.

“I’m of a sufficient age to remember Giuliani claiming that organized crime is dead,” said David Shapiro, a former FBI agent and assistant prosecutor who now lectures at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

While “the structure has changed, the leadership has changed, the methods of governance have changed, they’re still around because there are still people to be fleeced. It’s just not nearly as a centralized, as open, as organized,” Shapiro said.

There are occasional reminders that the Mafia lingers. Six years ago, the reputed boss of the Gambino family, Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, was shot to death in front of his Staten Island home. But the mob’s relative lack of visibility does not mean it’s gone away.

Jerry Capeci, an expert on the mob who writes the ganglandnews.com web column, said the Mafia remains a force in the gambling world.

“They’re not as out there as they used to be, and they stopped killing people. But they’re still around,” he said.

Mafia was in familiar territory with corrupt poker games

In the Brooklyn prosecution, the Mafia played a major role in the high-end poker games, with mobsters posing as ordinary players at the tables and providing the muscle to collect debts, prosecutors said.

The victims, including one who lost $1.8 million, were drawn to the games, usually Texas Hold ’Em, that seemed exclusive because former professional athletes played at the tables too.

But federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say the ex-athletes and all the other players were in on a ruse, using technology to rig the outcome.

The technology included corrupt automatic shuffling machines that read cards and predicted which player had the best hand. Some players in on the scheme wore special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read marked cards. These advantages were augmented by hidden cameras in the poker chip tray and light fixtures, along with an X-ray table that read cards that were face down.

The results of the surveillance were received by an off-site operator who relayed the information to a “quarterback” or “driver” at the table who signaled to the other cheating players what to do with their hands by tapping his chin, his arm or black chips.

Sometimes, prosecutors said in one court document, the corrupt players “tried to coordinate how to lose purposefully on occasion to keep the victim at the table for longer, or to avoid suspicion of cheating.”

A text message from “Big Mikey” to another person who was in on the scheme read: “Guys please let him win a hand he’s in for 40k in 40 minutes he will leave if he gets no traction,” according to court papers.

After the games, mob collected on debts

It was after the games when the Mafia displayed its muscle to collect on gambling debts that were not demanded at the games themselves, prosecutors said.

Sometimes, the victims wired what they owed to shell companies that laundered the debt. Other times, the mob leaned on more traditional crime tactics — robbery, extortion and assault, including a punch to one victim’s face — to force the card players to pay.

The sophistication of the alleged fraud may come as a surprise to some, said Ron Kuby, a lawyer who has represented purported mobsters.

“This old image of them as unsophisticated yet brutal folks just isn’t true anymore,” he said.

He predicted the case will produce plea bargains and relatively light prison sentences, while reminding the public of the mob’s continued role in the gambling world.

“Gambling has always been, as any Mafia historian will tell you, the mainstay of organized crime revenue,” he said. “It’s always there.”