NYC’s Notorious Mafia Families Are Alive and Caught Up in the NBA Gambling Scandal. Here’s What to Know

The New York mafia is still kicking—and it may be more powerful than experts believed. Several members of New York City’s most prominent crime families were among the dozens of people arrested on Thursday in connection with rigged poker games that federal officials say involved tens of millions of dollars and high-profile NBA figures. Prosecutors alleged that illegal poker games that cheated participants out of nearly $7 million in rewards through the use of special shuffling machines and high-tech sunglasses that enabled conspirators in the scheme to read the backs of playing cards, among other tactics, were run by the Gambino, Bonanno, Lucchese, and Genovese mafia families. These games “created a financial pipeline for ‘La Cosa Nostra’ to help fund and facilitate their organized criminal activity,” Christopher Raia, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said at a press conference on Thursday. “This alleged scheme wreaked havoc across the nation, exploiting the notoriety of some and the wallets of many to fund the Italian crime family here in New York.” La Cosa Nostra refers to one of the three major mafia confederations in Italy from which American-Italian mafia organizations are descended, Daniel DellaPosta, a professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University who has studied criminal networks between mafia families, tells TIME. The confederation in New York involves five families, who have dominated the city’s organized crime scene since they emerged from a pivotal conflict called the Castellammarese War in the 1930s. In total, 13 members and associates of four of those five have been indicted in the federal gambling investigations. Though the families once wielded far-reaching control within New York City, their influence—and membership—have been buffeted since the 1980s by corporate takeovers and prosecutions, according to experts. But the alleged involvement of several families in the gambling scheme could be a sign of their ongoing power. Here’s what to know. What does the indictment allege? The Gambino, Bonanno, Lucchese, and Genovese mafia families are accused of running rigged poker games, taking cuts of the profits, and forcefully going after those who owed debts. Victims of the scheme, according to prosecutors, were lured by the presence of celebrities like former NBA player and coach Damon Jones and current Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, who were allegedly cut in on the proceeds. One victim lost $1.8 million in the manufactured gambling matches, according to New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The poker games, which allegedly began as early as 2019, primarily took place in New York, according to officials, who said they occurred in the Greenwich Village and Kips Bay neighborhoods of Manhattan as well as popping up in the Hamptons, Miami, and Las Vegas. “This complex scheme was so far reaching that it included members from four of the organized crime families, and when people refused to pay because they were cheated, these defendants did what organized crime has always done: they used threats, intimidation, and violence,” Tisch said in a statement. What the mafia’s role in the alleged scheme could mean The dominance of the five prominent Italian families that has defined the modern era of the New York City mafia began in the wake of the Castellammarese War, which permanently altered the dynamics of organized crime in the city in the 1930s. After the death of Sicilian-born Salvatore Maranzano marked the end of the conflict between the Castellammarese family he had led and the Masseria family led by Giuseppe Masseria, Masseria’s chief lieutenant, Lucky Luciano, called a meeting of mafia bosses who became known as the “Commision.” That group consisted of the heads of the Five Families.  DellaPosta, the Pennsylvania State University professor, says that much of the mafia across the U.S. is directly related to these families. “One of the remarkable things about these mafia families is that there’s been a lot of consistency” he says. “Most of the groups that are around now in the United States are sort of directly descended from the groups that were around in the 1950s and some even going back to the 1930s.” Louis Ferrante, a former member of the Gambino mafia family, tells TIME that the five families used to have a much stronger degree of control over the city. Ferrante was arrested in the 90s and spent nearly nine years in prison before successfully appealing his own conviction and being released in 2003, after which he became an author of a trilogy about the mafia. “Basically, we were a heist crew for the mob. The mob gave us tips, we did heists. It could be a safe, it could be a bank, it could be anything. If you gave us a tip, we did it,” he says about his work for the Gambino family. He says the families used to control a vast network of unions and small businesses around the city when he was being brought up, but were eventually bought out by bigger corporations, which loosened the mafia’s grip on New York City. “They’ve lost a lot of the construction industry, the development projects. There was a time when they built the Jacob Javits Center,” he says, referencing construction unions the mafia oversaw. “They’re not building really anything now … My friend controlled all the garbage on Long Island, and he basically sold out to one of those monolithic companies.” Prosecutions in the 1980s and 1990s broke down the mafia’s power and led to the arrests of several prominent leaders. More recently, authorities in the Eastern District of New York indicted nine members of the Genovese and Bonanno families for illegal gambling, among other crimes, in 2022. In 2024, Carmelo Polito, former Genovese captain, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for running an illegal gambling business. Federico Varese, a professor of sociology at Sciences Po who has written extensively on mafias, estimates that the network of mafia members across the five families in New York City is now only made up of a few hundred individuals. “The general point is that they’re very weak, very weak, and there is not much evidence that they are particularly able to to control big markets,” Varese tells TIME. Varese notes that these families used to have a strong hand in the drug business, but were forced out by bigger supplier networks, significantly limiting their power and reach, which explains their involvement in smaller enterprises like gambling rings. Ferrante notes the mafia’s history within the sports betting industry, saying that large profits were made through rigged matches in boxing, basketball, and horse racing. With time, as corporations took over the industries mafia families once dominated, he says they had to resort to less elaborate, more discrete schemes to make money and stay in power. “They no longer have these huge rackets, like the garbage. And what do they have left? They went back to the basics,” he says. “They went back to gambling. People always gamble.” Ferrante and Varese both said that multiple families being involved in the gambling scheme alleged by federal prosecutors make it feel significant.  “Whenever you see multi families involved, you know it’s a big racket with big money,” Ferrante says. “Because it’s got to go around. You know, spread the bread.” Varese said that collaboration between the families is less common, and the details of the investigation indicate that they were aiding one another to run the illegal scheme. “I think the story is very interesting because it shows a high degree of cooperation among the families, which is quite unusual,” he says. “This investigation actually shows that they’re not as weak as people thought.”