A sports-betting guru ensnared in the explosive NBA gambling scandal tried to flee the country in January with $10,000 — and a one-way ticket to Colombia — as the feds closed in on a separate case, court papers reveal.
Shane “Sugar” Hennen, 40, was nabbed at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport in January as the feds pursued a point-shaving case against him and exiled NBA player Jontay Porter that served as a prelude to stunning twin indictments unveiled Thursday.
The feds accused Hennen, a convicted felon who regularly flaunted his gambling wins on Instagram, of masterminding a scheme in which Porter would pull himself out of games with bogus injuries to score big on sports bets.
Porter eventually pleaded guilty in the game-rigging scandal and was banned from the NBA, while Hennen — after his failed flight from justice — entered into plea negotiations in the case, court documents show.
The seedy affair turned out to be a mere curtain-raiser to a wider gambling case pursued by the feds, who arrested 31 people Thursday — including wiseguys from four Mafia families and Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones.
Hennen is charged in both indictments respectively covering illegal sports betting and rigged poker games.
He allegedly supplied cheating technology, such as card-shuffling machines altered to digitally read the cards in the deck, for the crooked poker games, court documents state.
The FBI has arrested 31 people involved in a rigged poker game ring backed by the New York City organized crime families.
- Ernest Aiello — reputed Bonanno mobster
- Nelson “Spanish G” Alvarez
- Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella
- Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh
- Saul Becher — professional poker player
- Chauncey Billups — Portland Trail Blazers coach, NBA Hall of Famer and 2004 NBA champion
- Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino
- Eric “Spooky” Earnest
- Lee Fama — professional poker player
- John Gallo
- Marco Garzon
- Thomas “Tommy Juice” Gelardo — reputed Lucchese mobster charged in 2013 for beating porn star girlfriend
- Jamie Gilet
- Tony “Black Tony” Goodson
- Kenny Han
- Shane “Sugar” Henne
- Osman “Albanian Bruce” Hoti
- Horatio Hu
- Zhen “Scruli” Hu
- Damon “Dee Jones” Jones — NBA player from 1998 to 2009
- Joseph Lanni
- John “John South” Mazzola
- Curtis Meeks
- Nicholas Minucci
- Michael Renzulli
- Anthony Ruggiero Jr.
- Anthony “Doc” Shnayderman
- Robert “Black Rob” Stroud
- Seth Trustman
- Sophia “Pookie” Wei
- Julius Ziliani
An indictment for the sports betting accusations also details how Hennen made bets based on Porter’s phony injuries.
But more explosively, the indictment alleges that Rozier — who had been cleared by the NBA after a probe into unusual betting activity — told the crooks he’d pull himself out of a 2023 game with an injury.
Hennen directed a network of fellow bettors who ended up shelling out $200,000 on bets that Rozier would underperform, the indictment states.
“Rozier’s early exit from the March 23 Game and his related underperformance relative to his season averages for points, assists and three-pointers resulted in the success of numerous fraudulent wagers placed on Rozier’s unders by the defendants and their co-conspirators,” the indictment states.
