The ongoing saga of the NBA's gambling scandal has taken another turn, as an alleged former NFL star may have been involved and cost a poker player and his friends nearly $1 million.
The New York Post reports that the purported victim of a Texas jeweler who was linked to the NBA gambling situation was scammed out of nearly $1 million, along with some of his poker friends, by an ex-NFL player. According to the report, the former NFL player was used as the “front man” of the scheme.
According to The New York Post, this claim “could mean that the exploding NBA gambling scandal could be much bigger than prosecutors have thus far revealed, and might include stars in other sports.”
“During the game, we were around a bunch of bad guys, and they were trying to suck every bit away from us,” a source told the outlet. “And they did. They did a good job, and I’m still shell-shocked to this day from that night.”
The New York Post reports Curtis Meeks used the former NFL star “to lure the group into a situation they realized was sketchy from the get-go.” However, the group of poker players didn't realize they were being scammed until the game had begun.
The source alleges that the game was originally planned for a public location. It was “suddenly changed” to his high-rise apartment before it began. Once there, it got “scarier” as “serious threats were made,” and the group decided to play.
That was not the only red flag, though. Once they were in the apartment, the host allegedly raised the buy-in from $10,000 to $20,000. “They didn't exchange cash to get in the game,” The New York Post notes, “but were given chips on a credit basis — payable afterwards.”
Of course, the winning hands went “to the four guys who were in on the scam,” per the source. “Those guys cheated with a device, and they cheated me and cheated other people who were good people. And they used a star athlete. They used the star to do it. They had us excited. The only reason they were able to pull this off was because they had a professional athlete in place.”
How did the source know it was rigged? “We knew that it was a device because of how they would push. It wasn’t like a thing where they could see the backs of cards. It was like, let’s go all in before any cards even come out,” they explained.
Per the source, if not for the former football player, the group of poker players wouldn't have joined the high-stakes game. Previously, the gambling scandal has been centered around NBA players and a coach.
Prosecutors allege that fraudsters and mobsters fixed big-money games. They did this by using cheating technology, including “rigged X-ray card tables, crooked card shufflers, and special glasses and contact lenses that could spy marked cards,” as The New York Post reports.
