Federal prosecutors allege that a Georgia man named John Mazzola, nicknamed “John South,” played on the “cheating team” in rigged poker games in Manhattan and Miami. The brazen high-tech scheme was backed by the mob and raised millions of dollars, according to an indictment unsealed this week.
At least some of this came as news to Mazzola’s wife.
“We don’t even own our own house. He drives a fucking truck. You can check all the accounts,” Tasha Mazzola said in a phone interview Friday.
“I can tell you he doesn’t even know half the people on the list,” he added, referring to the 30 other defendants in what investigators called “Operation Royal Flush.” She said her husband hasn’t played poker in New York City “in years” after his shoes and other belongings were stolen at gunpoint during a game.
The government’s 22-page indictment suggests there is more to the story. According to prosecutors, Mazzola was part of a criminal plot to lure high rollers to lavish tables surreptitiously equipped with card scanning devices, X-rays and other cheating equipment. Mazzola, 43, also allegedly participated in an armed robbery to steal a rigged shuffling machine.
He is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and robbery conspiracy. He appeared before a judge Thursday and was released with what authorities called a substantial bail package.
The backstories of the defendants and their alleged criminal enterprise began to come to light on Friday, a day after federal officials announced two extraordinary investigations into the parallel worlds of illegal underground gambling and insider sports betting.
The poker investigation ensnared Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and a dozen associates of the “Five Families,” the Italian mafia clans that have long ruled organized crime in the New York area.
“The fraud is mind-boggling,” FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters at a news conference Thursday, referring to the alleged crime as a “criminal enterprise involving both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.” At least one of the accused mobsters is an alleged Gambino crime family captain whose first felony conviction dates back to 1999.
But some defendants appear to have lived in relative anonymity. Authorities have released little information about Sophia Wei, nicknamed “Pookie,” the only woman charged in the poker ring case.
In an interview Friday, Wei’s former owner in Queens, New York, said he formed a negative impression of her during the decade he lived in her building.
“She was nasty. She was arrogant. She was a diva. She wouldn’t let me up if I needed to do a repair,” said Ashley Scharge, 66, who lives in Bayside. “Then he escaped from me. He left my house in a mess, with things everywhere: clothes, food.”
Wei did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
In the indictment, federal prosecutors characterized Wei as a member of a “trap team.” Billups was a “Face Card,” a high-profile person who the orchestrators believed could help lure unsuspecting players to the fixed tables.
Billups and Wei can be seen together in a photo obtained by NBC News. The photograph was taken in May 2019 during a game hosted by Wei at a luxury hotel in New York City, where waitresses offered massages and drinks to attendees while they played.
The series of court documents revealed Thursday describe how the alleged fraud worked and, in at least one case, when it nearly went off the rails.
In the middle of a game in Las Vegas in 2019, Wei and other defendants realized that Billups was winning too many longshot hands, thanks to the rigged shuffling machine. In text messages that were included in the government’s detention memo, Wei suggests that Billups try to avoid suspicion by losing on purpose.
In total, prosecutors say the scheme generated more than $7 million in six years.
The FBI said it is still pursuing other leads.
“It’s like anything. You peel away the onion and there are more layers,” said Christopher Raia, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office. “This investigation is ongoing.”
