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Terry Rozier, left, a Miami Heat guard, and Chauncey Billups, the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, were named in indictments aimed at illegal gambling.

On March 23, 2023, an N.B.A. player left a game in New Orleans after playing just 10 minutes. His team said the player, Terry Rozier, was experiencing “foot discomfort.”

But according to federal prosecutors, Mr. Rozier’s departure was a key moment in an insider-trading scheme. Before the game, they say, Mr. Rozier had informed his childhood friend Deniro Laster that he would be exiting the game early, so that Mr. Laster and others could bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on his underperformance for the Charlotte Hornets.

On Thursday morning, Mr. Rozier was arrested in Orlando, Fla., and charged with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. He was one of dozens of people — including Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers — named in two indictments aimed at illegal gambling.

The charges spanned the worlds of professional sports, Mafia families and online betting, pairing traditional smoky-room card cheating with corruption enabled by today’s ubiquitous betting apps and smartphones. Each indictment described schemes that the authorities said defrauded gamblers; one cast doubt on the integrity of N.B.A. games.

“This is the insider-trading saga for the N.B.A.,” Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., said at a news conference on Thursday announcing the charges at the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. He was flanked inside the office’s packed library by Jessica Tisch, the New York police commissioner; Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S.

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