Speaker 1: Paul Raus.
Speaker 2: It's time to check in with Preston and Garrett Handy
of Handy and Handy for sports court. Handy and Handy
are your accident and personal injury attorneys ready to assist
with any related.
Speaker 1: Questions you may have.
Speaker 2: Ple visit them online at Handylawutah dot com. Big Firm Experience,
Small firm Attention.
Speaker 3: Welcome back Cougar Sports one O three nine ninety eight
point three ESPN the Fan. I'm been crudal broadcasting from
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Speaker 1: A great sports court segment.
Speaker 3: Big Firm Experience, Small firm Attention Here at Handy at
Handyhandylawutah dot com.
Speaker 1: It's time to play judge and jury.
Speaker 3: What's the verdict on the biggest headlines in sports and
law today? It's stopped for a little sports court brought
to you by are good friends and Handy and Handy
that each week we break down the real life legal drama,
intersecting with your favorite athletes, teams, and leagues, from contract disputes,
nil chaos, sideline scandals, and courtroom battles. We're gonna be
diving deep with Utah's most trusted injury attorneys. Garrett impressed
and handy here momentarily, we got them on the line
yet by chance. Okay, they just tried calling me on
my personal cell phone, so I don't know if we
can get back out with them.
Speaker 1: With their uh okay, here, let.
Speaker 3: Me let me let me text you over another number here, Andrew,
and we'll get them on the line. Here momentarily having
a little technical difficulties here as they're trying to call
my cell phone. I can't get them on the line
right now. I just sent you the number that they're
trying to get a hold of me on though. Eight
oh one eight two sixty four sixty six seven seven
is the number that they just trying to call from.
That's eight one two six four sixty six seven seven
to get them on the line.
Speaker 1: But we all know what everyone's wondering, Okay.
Speaker 3: The FBI has found thirty people guilty of illegally gambling
sports betting, getting involved in high level stakes poker play
where you're using X ray machines and video cameras, all
in the name of the hustle when getting as much
money in your pocket as possible, because it's never enough,
never enough. How much money has Jauncey Billups made as
a player? Okay, as a player and also as a coach.
They keep on trying to call me, Andrew, they keep
on trying to call me here. So anyway, Chauncey Billups
made a lot of money in the NBA as a
coach and a player.
Speaker 1: It wasn't enough. He wanted more, he needed more.
Speaker 3: So the federal gambling case that it's there at NBA
stars and mobsters. Apparently it goes deep. It's everywhere. You
wonder how deep this goes? How many star players are involved?
Is the NBA the only league that this is happening within?
Speaker 1: You wonder? I hope it's only the NBA.
Speaker 3: But the NBA has been on a downward trajectory for
the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: It just has been.
Speaker 3: The hottest show in the NBA is Charles Barkley and
Shaquille O'Neill making fun of players in the NBA. Kenny
Smith is involved, right the TNT guys. That's the biggest
show in the NBA, in my opinion, in the most
entertaining show in the NBA. So this goes deep and
runs deep and ultimately the number check this out, okay. Thursday,
Billups needed to do something very few professional athletes enjoy.
Speaker 1: Lose on purpose.
Speaker 3: That's the only way the criminal enterprise could keep raking
in cash. It ultimately netted more than seven million dollars
over six years. Prosecutor State Billups, Miami heat guard terros Here,
and dozens of others were charged Thursday as part of
a two sweeping investigation, one into legal sports gambling and
the other into poker rigging schemes allegedly backed by the mafia.
The extraordinary feneral takedown led to the arrest of more
than the thirty people, still some of them unnamed, across
eleven states on charges including wire fraud, money laundering, extortion.
Speaker 1: Robbery, and of course, illegal gambling.
Speaker 3: FBI Director Cash Bettel said at a news conference the
fraud is mind boggling, okay, referring to the alleged wrongdoing
as a criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and
Locosa Nostra the Mafioso group. He said the schemes involve
tens of millions of dollars in ill gotten gains. The
web of alleged criminal activity was laid out in two
federal indictments that read like plot summaries from a Martin
Scorcsi Scorsese film epics. Crime epics officials say key roles
were played in one case by members of the notorious Bonano, Gambino, Jonovesa,
and Lucezi crime families, as well as defendants with nicknames
like the wrestler Juice, Big Bruce and Pooky. All right,
Eddie Luck getting Preston and Garrett Handy on the line,
Eddie Luck.
Speaker 1: No, Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: We'll continue to effort in our sports court. Okay, got it?
Check this one out. Golf legend Jack Nicholas wins fifty
million verdict in defamation lawsuit against former business partners. Yes,
Jack Nicholas won fifty million.
Speaker 1: Did he need it? No? But he won it.
Speaker 3: A six person injury in Palm Beach County found Monday
that the Nicholas companies had damaged the eighteen time Major
champions reputation and exposed him to ridicule. Hatred, mistrust, distrust
or contempt. Nicholas Company's owner and executive chairman Howard Milstein,
and executive Andrew O'Brien were also named individually as defendants,
but George did not find them personally liable. Eugene Sterns,
an attorney for Nicholas, said Nicholas has spent his life
helping others and earning a reputation as not just a
great athlete, but a great human being. He deserved better
than what he got and were pleased that the jury
addressed this particular circumstance, these particular circumstances that were so annoying.
All right, let's get out to the online welcome in
Preston and Garrett Hatty. Sorry about the technical difficulties, guys,
we apologize, no problem.
Speaker 1: Hey, we're good man.
Speaker 3: We're talking gambling. We're talking crime, mob bosses. We're talking
Jack Nicholas getting fifty million dollars in his pocket. It's crazy.
Sports court is underwey. So let's get into this now.
How often have we seen gambling shenanigans in sports? I
mean we're seeing this many times, right, and I don't
know how often the FBI gets involved, but I want
to say that Tim Donaghy.
Speaker 1: Issue in two thousand and seven was a big one.
Speaker 3: The FBI got involved once again, the FBI having to
get involved in twenty twenty five, this one seems big.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, and I'll jump in on this just because
this really involves the Terry Rosier indictment. I mean, there's
really kind of two big indictments that came out today, right,
one's the poker game and the other one is the
sports betting. And to answer your question, Ben, I mean,
it really is. It's just a lot more widespread because
it's so easy now to place a sports bet, right,
I mean with all the different apps and services and
the ways that we can transfer money now, it's just
all over the place and ubiquitous. And this is something
that people really feared about was going to be an issue.
But you know, the other case, you know they didn't
mention is the John tay Porter case, another NBA player
I think he was with the Raptors, and in fact
he's mentioned in this indictment against Terry Rozier. But but basically,
what this what this really is, Bennets, It's a it's
an insider trading case. And so Terry Rozier has inside
information as an active NBA player, right, he knows which
players are hurt or injured or sick or not going
to play. Might know a team, you know, what the
lineup is going to be for a they're his team
or an opposing team. And so he is able to
provide that information to his his buddies or co conspirators.
Is the indictment reads, and it allows them to place
easy game winning bets. And and a lot of these
bets are you know, or prop bets different because you
can now make all kinds of easily just make all
kinds of bets. And so he's he's in some big,
big trouble. I mean, he was on the bench last
night at the end of the bench, didn't play in Orlando,
and this morning arrested. So the NBA has placed him
on leave. And so we'll be following this case pretty closely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you begin to wonder, you know, how
often this is gonna happen, how long this has been happening,
even going further in the past, how deep does it go,
How many big names will come out here, and are
they protecting any of those big names?
Speaker 4: Well, there's a few other names. You know, several people
named in the indictment. I mean the other one is
this former player Damon Jones, you know, not not a
current NBA player, But yeah, I don't think it's far
fetched to say that there may be other NBA players
and that this will be an ongoing issue that law
enforcement and the FBI are going to have to watch closely,
and maybe the league's gonna need to, you know, somehow
implement some new new rules regarding this. But because it's
just it's just so easy to play sports bet.
Speaker 3: It's easy, and and then who's the blame for all this?
Like I even noticed on ESPN. Look, this is our
this is our namesake, right, we are part of the
ESPN family. They're pulling ESPN bet advertising off of some
of the the imaging on live television.
Speaker 1: Because of the this.
Speaker 3: Has become intertwined sports betting and the access to betting
and having it interwoven with the entertainment component of it.
Monetizing this, uh, taking the advertising dollars of these sports
betting apps and URLs and platforms. It's it's kind of
the the fault of the sports world.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, I mean, yeah, I mean to allow this
to happen. You know, well, you can say it's a
fall of sports world or it's the fault of sports
betting technology. I mean, it's again with the apps and
you know, whether it's Draft Kings or FanDuel or on
and on, you know, and it's just it's just easy,
easy to do this. In my mind, that's really the
issue is just the technology that's emerged. You don't have
to be in Las Vegas and a casino or call
a bookie sports bookie in place a bet. You can
just grab your phone and do it. And so it's
pretty easy.
Speaker 3: Crazy times, guys, Let's move on to the golf course.
Jack Nicholas won that fifty million dollar verdict and a
defamation lawsuit fout in Florida, gainst his former business partners.
Speaker 1: Give us an update on this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do want after I talked about I do
want to talk about the Chauncey Billips one because I
think that one is really fiery. We didn't dress on that.
Two indictments team bent down today from the FBI. Maybe
I'll just hit on that one really quick. You know,
you heard two indictments, but they're entirely two different cases,
and you know, and so this one from Chauncey billups
I mean rig shuffling machines, X ray technic technology tables,
crypt fraud, LaCOSA nostra, you know, the coach of the
Portland Trailblazers, Chauncey Billupsh. He was indicted and arrested today
and the and the claim is that he has part
a organized poker scheme, a fraud scheme, poker gambling scheme
which is run by as they list the families, the
you know VC family, the Gambino family, the Bonano family.
The claim is that Chauncey billups He would get people
to these high stakes poker games and with him there
it seemed like some legitacy, but they were running a
scam where you know, they had technology tables that could
read people's charge cards, they had illegal shuffling machines which
would deal out the cards in an illegal way. And
so now he's been charged with They said it has
been going on for several years. Tens and tens of
millions dollars of people who have been built out of
this money. If they couldn't pay the money, guess who
was behind it. The mafia was doing some things that
was reported to get this money. Now, Chauncey Billups has
been charged with wirefraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. So
I think this one's a crazy deal. You know how
this happened. So he's and now he's been in dieted.
So anything on that, I want to jump to the
Jack Nicholas story because we kind of would lead into that.
But this is something we've talked about for a long time.
And so the background on this is Jack Nicholas, the
Golden Bear, arguably the greatest golfer of all time. After
his career, he really branded himself. He got into the
golf course designed business where he was designing golf courses
all around the world. It was very prestigious to have
a Nicholas design course. He had the Nicholas Company, he
had a pail company, all kinds of things. Well, back
in two thousand and seven, he's sold his rights to
the Nicholas Company to another partner for a lot of
money at that time, about one hundred and fifty million
that time. Well, time goes on and he's on the board,
and when he finally gets out of the board, he
wants to start designing golf courses again. Well, they sued him,
claiming that he was Torsa's interference, that it was a
breach of contract, it was a breach of his non
compete clause. Well, that thing went through litigation and the
court ultimately decided that he had met his own compete.
It it ran, and so he could go compete. Well, what
happened during that litigation, which is part of what we're
talking about today, is his former business partners. When they
sued him in the lawsuit, they said, you know, basically
Jack Nicholas was going to enter into a deal with
Live Golf, and Live Golf had kind of a and
still dozen in some ways with the Saudis that has
kind of a different representation. But they said that Jack
was suffering from dementia, had mental health issues, and that
he was going to do deal with Live And Jack
came out and said, hey, wait a minute, I'm promoting
the PGA. If the PGA's against this, I would never
do that. And in their complaint, Nicholas Companies basically said
we had to say Jack from himself. Well, what did
Jack do? He said, I don't appreciate that. So he
sued the Nicholas Companies and his former partner Howard Milstein
for defamation. The elements of defamation are that if someone
publishes or says verbalizes a statement that is in fact
fault and that statement causes damages, then there's potential defamation. Well,
this thing made it to trial. It actually made it
a trial, not things. A lot of things make it
to trial. A lot of times there's settlement, negotiations or
mediation or something happens before it hit trial. Well, the
jury actually agreed with Jack Nicholas, his attorney and his
closing statement, and he said, Hey, these guys they tried
to stain Jack and they wanted in the minds of
the public. They wanted Jack Nicholas. It's just a crazy
old guy who sold out to the audience. Well, the
jury came back and said that they had subjected him
to ridicule, hate, tred, mistrust, distrust, and contempt an award
in fifty million dollars. You know how they came up
that was basically what they think. It damaged his reputation
and then he had to go through that was defamation.
So big win for Jack Nicholas.
Speaker 1: Big win.
Speaker 3: Indeed, let's move on to another goat on the basketball court, though,
and then I think this is a NASCAR situation though
trial looms. Nascar Jordan feud may reshape US motor sports.
Speaker 1: What's going on here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So what this, what this has to do with
is is really how NASCAR is run, and it's it's
run on a charter system, and so any team competing
in NASCAR has to have a charter. You you negotiate
over and purchase this charter and it entitles you to
race your team. And Michael Jordan's team and another one
called front Row, they were due to sign their charters
I think it was last year and they didn't apparently
like the terms. Well that's what that's what NASCAR is saying,
and so they held out and wouldn't sign, and some
legal wrangling went on after that, and the lawsuits filed
by Michael Jordan's a team against NASCAR. He's got a
very heavy hitter sports lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, who's been involved
in a lot of cases we've talked about on Sports
Court and alleging that NASCAR is essentially a monopoly, that
they are anti competitive, and that they you know, if
you want to participate in high end, high level stock
car motorsports, NASCAR is the only game in town. I mean,
like a lot of our leagues, right, I mean, there's
just one professional league, more or less. And so this
lawsuit has gone on and there's been you know, different
all kinds of motions filed. There's a motion for summary judgment,
you know, trying to get the case knocked out. And
then the last couple of days that both sides were
in mediation the court, the judge ordered mediation, basically told
both sides, hey, you guys need to get together and
see if you can settle the case. Mediations failed, and
so now it looks like it's headed for trial in December.
So I'm sure we'll have another update for you at
that point.
Speaker 3: Crazy times, guys. Any other news and notes coming out
of the Sports Court today that we want to delve into.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one, we just want to final finalize. It's a
local story. Last year, last week before the rivalry game,
we talked about the gentlemen who'd made threats of shooting
as if they were red and you know, and talked
about bullets in the head. Well, there's been a resolution
to the other crazy or unreasonable fan, the fan who
throw the water bottle last year, who hit the cheerleading
coach to be a cheerleading coach in the head, doctor
unconscious for ten of fifteen seconds. Well, he's been sentenced,
and you know, it's reported that she's had a pretty
rough year. She's you know, had a pretty severe concussion.
She's gone to some problems of it's reported ongoing horrible headache,
business vision problems, fatigue, stress to meet her and her children.
She's had memory issues, that type of things. Don't report
on what happened on a civil issue. But now this
the fan who was charged with third degree felony assault
pleaded to reduce charge of assault charge a class A misdemeanor,
and he spent one day in jail and had to
pay a fine of two thousand dollars. He says, there's
not a single day I haven't regretted what I did.
So sentence team to that case that actually came around
in the actually those penalies.
Speaker 3: So there's a civil judgment and then there's like a
public kind of judgment there.
Speaker 1: Guys like, we're not going to know what the civil.
Speaker 3: The civil I guess judgment is ultimately here in this
particular case.
Speaker 5: Right, probably not. I don't know if anything's happened behind
the scens civily. I mean there's always I mean, I mean,
I'll use the example of the Jake Retlow case. There
were no civil charges or criminal charges ever filed, but
there was a civil lawsuit. It was all brought under
a civil and civil lawsuits are seeking renuneration compensation. You
have to prove liability, meaning someone did something they shouldn't
have done unreasonably through a bottle hit and someone who's
incurred damages in the form of medical expenses, maybe lost
income here, a concussion, pain and suffering. It talked about
all things that you know, medical medical treatment. So I
don't know. I'll bet there might have been a civil
lawsuit or a civil claim made and maybe settled, but
we haven't heard anything about it. I doubt we will.
Speaker 3: There you go, gentlemen, that's our sport cord for the day.
That's the judge judges verdict, the jury's verdict on all
the news and notes coming out of the sports Coordinate.
It was brought to you by Handy and Handy Handy
Law youta dot com. Give them a call, set up
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Speaker 3: Uh, why should if someone's been in an action, why
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That's what we do. You can reach a city zero
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Speaker 3: Accidents happen fast, help you be faster. Head on over
to handylaw Utah dot com. A eight oh one two
six four sixty six seven seven gentlemen. Always a pleasure man,
Thanks for gotting, Thanks for joining us once again.
Speaker 4: Thank you Ben.
Speaker 5: Thanks Ben, have a great.
Speaker 3: Day there you have it big firm experience, small firm attention,
handy law Utah dot com. We'll take a brief time out.
We'll be back more to get to. This is Cougar
Sports on one of three nine ninety eight point three
es