00:00You may have seen yesterday that Damon Jones plans to plead guilty now in the federal illegal gambling case against
00:07him and a few other players.
00:09Now, Damon's an interesting one because what Damon was accused of, which he's now going to own up to,
00:15is the fact that he was trading on quote-unquote insider information specifically about the health of LeBron James and
00:23Anthony Davis.
00:24Damon Jones was one of LeBron's closest friends and had unadulterated access to the Lakers facility, went to practices, was
00:31in the locker room.
00:32And he, of course, would have known, is LeBron playing tonight? Is AD playing tonight?
00:37And he was accused of trading off that information so that gamblers could then go out there and wager on
00:43over-unders and other types of bets
00:45and even on the Lakers winning outright or not. And he is now going to plead guilty to that.
00:51The other guys in this case are not pleading guilty as of right now, but it shows you the concern
00:57and why there's such a concern about parlay wagers and specifically prop wagers.
01:03Damon Jones had access to inside information. Now, I want to be very clear about this.
01:09For the moment, no one is suggesting that LeBron James or Anthony Davis or anybody else with the Lakers
01:15was aware that Damon Jones was then flipping around when he left the building, picking up the phone and saying
01:21to his gambling buddies,
01:22hey, AD's out tonight. Hey, LeBron's only going to play limited minutes tonight.
01:27That type of stuff, which then those gamblers profited on.
01:30But it's a real concern and why there's going to be a future for sure where prop wagers,
01:38specifically unders, are no longer allowed.
01:41Yeah, it's a little bit crazy.
01:43And I wonder how much information they asked for him to share as part of this plea.
01:50Good question. So he's the first and only guy thus far to change his plea from not guilty to guilty.
01:57Normally, when there's a group of guys that get arrested, we've all seen this,
01:59when usually it's more like a drug kind of case, 50 guys get pinched or a weapons case, something like
02:05that.
02:05But the first guy to strike a deal gets the best deal.
02:09The second guy might not get a deal.
02:12Now, Damon Jones might not even be a big fish here.
02:15So Damon Jones might now have access to things that the feds knew nothing about.
02:20They only know what they think they have on him, you know, Chauncey Billups and the other guys that were
02:25named in the original suit last year.
02:27But Damon Jones might have gone to them. Clearly, he's going to plead guilty.
02:30So he's giving them information. He's a cooperating witness now for the feds.
02:35But now the question is, is Damon Jones telling them stuff about people that the feds had no idea about?
02:44Right.
02:44That's where this is going to go.
02:45So if you're a guy that at the time was close to Damon Jones or might have said to Damon
02:51Jones just off the cuff,
02:52yeah, man, my niece killing me.
02:54If I go at all tonight, I only got about 10 minutes in me.
02:57That's all going to come out now, meaning other people, not just the guys that were arrested in the sting
03:03that caught Damon Jones.
03:05Other people who have not yet been arrested are about to get arrested.
03:10Yeah.
03:10And I feel very firm about that.
03:13Now, he's also the only guy who was arrested for both the cards.
03:17The card game, right.
03:18As well.
03:19So Chauncey, allegedly, according to Gilbert Aritas, I feel comfortable saying this, he said basically Chauncey, quote, was robbing his
03:27friends.
03:28Right.
03:28And Gilbert's in trouble now, too.
03:30He's not out of the woods either.
03:31He's not out of the woods.
03:32But he said, he says his was, everybody was gambling.
03:35He claims, of course he's going to say this, it was on the up and up.
03:37He got in trouble because someone snitched that the game was illegal, blah, blah, blah.
03:41Right.
03:42That's what Gilbert signed it.
03:43He says in the case of Chauncey, Chauncey had rigged games that Chauncey knew about.
03:49Would call up his famous and rich friends, bring them to the game, and basically rob his friends.
03:55Right.
03:55Damon Jones was one of those friends.
03:57Right.
03:57What does he tell about that side as well?
04:00Well, and let's play it out.
04:01And this is me, this is conjecture.
04:03This is not me knowing a fact.
04:04Real fast before you go, just because we're clear, Chauncey's only caught for the cards.
04:09Damon Jones was for basketball and the cards.
04:11Right.
04:11And here's the problem.
04:12When you're playing in those types of games, you most likely have some type of gambling problem.
04:17I have played in those games, like the movie Rounders.
04:19I've lived that life.
04:21I've been in those underground games.
04:22I've been in games run by the mafia.
04:24I've been in games run by the Jewish mob.
04:27I've been in games run by an African-American cartel.
04:31And I've been in games run by an Asian cartel as well.
04:35So I've lived this sadly, and I can speak to it maybe better than most.
04:39When you go into those games, those are handshake cash games.
04:44This ain't like, here's my credit card.
04:45You'll charge my card.
04:47If you get yourself in trouble, there's two ways out.
04:51Obviously, A, go borrow money from somebody and pay off the debt.
04:54Or B, listen, if you have any information for us that we can profit on, we can start knocking your
05:01debt down, and you'll be clean with us.
05:03So make it up.
05:04Damon Jones, I'm making this up.
05:05Damon Jones is in the hole for half a mil, right?
05:08He has a terrible month playing cards with these guys, and he ain't got half a mil liquid.
05:13All right, Damon, we're going to put you on a payment plan, but it's going to cost you $3 million
05:16when it's all said and done, unless you've got something you want to give us.
05:20And he's like, yeah, give me a week.
05:22I'll give you a week, right?
05:23All right.
05:25Anthony Davis, nobody knows this.
05:27He ain't playing Saturday night.
05:29LeBron James is going to Europe.
05:31He needs a treatment.
05:32His knee's not right.
05:34Again, I'm making this up, all right?
05:36But he would have hypothetical access to that information.
05:38Clearly, he has access to it.
05:39I mean, he was in the building.
05:40Yes, and look, LeBron's attached to it because he was LeBron's guy.
05:44LeBron got him access.
05:46No one is accusing LeBron of this.
05:47Nobody has.
05:48Now, to be fair, to be fair, though, guys involved with Clutch were also wagering on the NBA.
05:54And that's a proven fact that there were guys involved with Clutch, starting with Rich Paul,
06:00who don't even deny the fact that they were NBA basketball gamblers.
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