Reported by Alex Oliveira

(Excerpt shared below. To read full report, go to: https://nypost.com/2025/10/23/us-news/how-mafiosos-and-nba-stars-used-rigged-card-shufflers-x-ray-tables-and-secret-contact-lenses-in-poker-scam/)

NYC mafiosos and NBA stars used a combination of high-tech contraptions and old-school gambling tricks to swindle hapless high-rollers out of $7 million in a sprawling backroom poker scheme, prosecutors alleged in an explosive indictment Thursday.

The years-long con depended on “advanced wireless technologies,” the indictment read,along with a network of operators monitoring games remotely and communicating with handlers planted inside the room — some of whom filled the poker table and were all working together to gauge their unknowing victims.

Card shuffling machines that had been tampered with took center stage in the con, with mobsters from four of New York’s Five Familiesallegedly rigging them with card readers and computerized analyzers, which would broadcast the best hands to an operator outside the game room.

“At the Rigged Games, the members of the Cheating Teams … used card shuffling machines that were purportedly randomly shuffling the playing cards to ensure fairness,” the indictment read. “However, the Rigged Shuffling Machines were secretly altered to use concealed technology.”