X-ray tables, hidden cameras: Tech in rigged poker linked to the mob and the NBA

The rigged poker games linked to the NBA and the mob relied on high-tech gadgets like an x-ray table, hacked card shufflers and hidden cameras.

Card-reading contact lenses, X-ray poker tables, trays of poker chips that read cards, hacked shuffling machines that predict hands. The technology alleged to have been used to execute a multistate, rigged poker operation sounds like it’s straight out of Hollywood.

And those were only some of the gadgets that authorities say were used to swindle millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims through rigged, high-dollar, underground poker games over more than five years.

A sprawling indictment unsealed Thursday by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged Chauncey Billups, the head coach of the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, and Damon Jones, a former NBA player, along with members of the Mafia and dozens of other defendants, with being part of a conspiracy.

The victims were “at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contacts lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella of Brooklyn said in a statement.

Cheating at poker is as old as poker itself. But today, wearable tech and nano-cameras are putting even upstanding poker players on their guard.