>>/167587/,  >>/167588/
As alleged in the indictment, beginning as early as 2019, the defendants engaged in a series of schemes to use wireless cheating technology to rig illegal poker games (most commonly, Texas Hold’em) in the Eastern District of New York and across the United States.  Co-conspirators in the scheme included game organizers, who arranged for unwitting victims to play in underground illegal poker games that were secretly rigged; suppliers of the rigged cheating technology; former professional athletes, who were enlisted as “Face Cards” in the scheme to entice the victims’ participation in the games; cheating teams who worked together using the cheating technology to defraud the victims; money launderers; and members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese organized crime families of LCN, who backed games in the New York area and took a percentage of the crime proceeds from those games.  LCN members and associates had a foothold in the rigged poker scheme because they had preexisting control over “straight” (i.e., non-rigged) illegal poker games in New York City, where some of the rigged poker games also occurred: one that was hosted principally at Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, that was on record with the Bonanno family (the “Lexington Avenue Game”); and a second that was hosted principally at Washington Place in Manhattan, that was on record with the Gambino family (the “Washington Place Game”).  As part of the schemes, some of the charged defendants and other co-conspirators also committed acts of violence, including the robbery and extortions charged in the indictment.

In a typical legitimate poker game, a dealer uses a shuffling machine to shuffle the cards randomly before dealing them to all the players in a particular order.  As set forth in the indictment, the rigged games used altered shuffling machines that contained hidden technology allowing the machines to read all the cards in the deck.  Because the cards were always dealt in a particular order to the players at the table, the machines could determine which player would have the winning hand. This information was transmitted to an off-site member of the conspiracy, who then transmitted that information via cellphone back to a member of the conspiracy who was playing at the table, referred to as the “Quarterback” or “Driver.”  The Quarterback then secretly signaled this information (usually by prearranged signals like touching certain chips or other items on the table) to other co-conspirators playing at the table, who were also participants in the scheme.  Collectively, the Quarterback and other players in on the scheme (i.e., the cheating team) used this information to win poker games against unwitting victims, who sometimes lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time. The defendants used other cheating technology as well, such as a chip tray analyzer (essentially, a poker chip tray that also secretly read all cards using hidden cameras), an x-ray table that could read cards face down on the table, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards.

The defendants and their co-conspirators bet accordingly to ensure that the unsuspecting victims lost money.  Through the rigged poker schemes, the defendants caused losses to victims of at least $7 million.
cont...