gambling

Primm Valley Resorts, the last full-time casino among a cluster of three off Interstate 15 in Primm, at the California-Nevada border, is permanently closing, according to a termination notice sent to employees on Tuesday.

The letter, posted by Las Vegas insider publication Las Vegas Locally, noted that employees who worked at Primm Valley would be let go by July 4. It’s not known if the casino will close that day or before.

An email to Primm Valley Resorts owner Affinity Gaming was not immediately returned.

Primm Valley was the last of three operating casino resorts in Primm, formerly known as State Line. The castle-shaped Whiskey Pete’s opened in 1977, followed by Primm Valley in 1990 and Buffalo Bill’s in 1994.

In a letter to the Clark County Board of Commissioners, Erin Barnett, Affinity’s vice president and general counsel, wrote in October 2024 that “traffic at the state line has proved to be heavily weighted towards weekend activity and is insufficient to support three full-time casino properties.”

Along with Primm Valley Resorts, Primadonna Co. LLC, owned by Affinity Gaming, is closing the Primm Center gas station and the Flying J truck stop located at Whiskey Pete’s; that casino closed in December 2024.

The termination notice comes nearly a year after Affinity Gaming ended 24/7 operations at Buffalo Bill’s Resort on July 6. The casino opened on days in which its concert venue, the Star of the Desert Arena, hosted special events.

Lights glow on the Buffalo Bill’s Resort and Casino sign on July 6, 2025, in Primm, Nev.

(Bridget Bennett / For The Times)

It’s unclear what happens to music and magic acts booked until July 25.

It’s not known how long other Affinity-owned properties in the area, such as the popular Lotto Store on the California side of the border, will continue to operate. Nevadans have been known to drive for several miles and wait in long lines to buy Powerball tickets, particularly when jackpots creep into 10 figures.

The notice informed employees “this action is expected to result in the permanent termination of employment for all employees at these locations.”

As late as September, Primm Valley Resorts emailed media members promoting renovated rooms and signature experiences at its final resort.

Primm once shined as one of Nevada’s more popular gambling resorts. The three-casino complex served as a less expensive, less flashy, slightly more kitschy alternative to Las Vegas that benefited from being a good 45 minutes closer to Los Angeles than Sin City.

Several factors have contributed to Primm’s slow decline, including the COVID pandemic and increased competition from casinos popping up on tribal lands in California.

Those newer casinos are easier to get to than Primm from key Southern California population centers, reducing the value proposition.

Former Lakers assistant coach Damon Jones became the first among 34 defendants to plead guilty Tuesday in an expansive gambling indictment that also ensnared Hall of Fame player Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat star Terry Rozier and organized crime figures.

Jones was a Lakers coach in 2022 and 2023, long after he retired from an 11-year NBA playing career with 11 teams. Before a Feb. 9, 2023, game between the Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks in which LeBron James was a late scratch because of a foot injury, evidence showed that Jones urged a co-conspirator to “get a big bet on Milwaukee before the information is out!”

Jones urged his co-conspirator in a text: “Bet enough so Djones can eat to [sic] now!!!”

Jones and James were considered good friends for years. A person close to James told The Times in October that the Lakers star didn’t know that Jones was selling injury information to gamblers placing bets.

Jones had entered not guilty pleas in November to the two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his role in sports betting and rigged poker game schemes. However, during back-to-back hearings in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, he entered guilty pleas to those charges.

Sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 6 before separate judges in the two cases. Guidelines call for 21 to 27 months in prison for the sports gambling charge and 63 to 78 months for the charge on rigged poker games. Prosecutors said they agreed to shave 15 months from the sentence in exchange for Jones pleading guilty by April 30.

He pleaded guilty in the sports betting case first. In a prepared statement, he acknowledged that he conspired with others to defraud sports betting companies by using “insider information that I obtained as a result of my relationships as a former player.”

Jones, 49, said the goal of the sports betting conspiracy was to use his insider knowledge of injuries to players to make money gambling.

“I would like to sincerely apologize to the court, my family, my peers and also the National Basketball Association,” said Jones, who was paid $21 million as a player.

Next came pleading guilty to participating in rigged poker games. Jones admitted that he was paid to use his NBA celebrity to lure deep-pocketed gamblers to poker games in Miami and New York.

Again reading from a statement, Jones said that, based on conversations with his co-conspirators at poker games, “I knew these games were rigged and that players were being cheated.”

And again he concluded with an apology, addressing the court, his family and friends.

“I’m really sorry to everyone involved for my actions,” he said.

Prosecutors said Monday they would seek additional charges against Rozier in the sports betting case because they had developed evidence that the 10-year NBA veteran solicited a bribe during an alleged gambling scheme.

According to the original indictment, when Rozier played for the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, he told friends he was planning to leave a game early with a “supposed injury,” allowing others to place wagers. Rozier has made $135 million as a player.

Billups, who played with the Clippers for two seasons and later was a member of Clippers coach Ty Lue’s staff before being named head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2021, is charged with rigging underground poker games that authorities said were backed by three of New York’s Mafia families. Billups, who was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2024, made $107 million as a player.

Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby is entering a residential treatment program for a gambling addiction and will be away from the team indefinitely, he and the Red Raiders announced Monday in a joint statement.

According to ESPN, Sorsby decided to seek treatment after it was discovered he made “thousands of online bets on a variety of sports via a gambling app.”

Multiple media outlets are reporting that Sorsby placed bets on Indiana football to win games during the 2022 season, when he was a redshirt freshman for the Hoosiers. He reportedly did not place bets on the one game in which he participated that season.

“We love Brendan and support his decision to seek professional help,” Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said in a statement. “Taking this step requires courage, and our primary focus is on him as a person. Our program is behind Brendan as he prioritizes his health.”

The team said it would have no further statement on Sorsby’s status or treatment progress at this time.

The NCAA is investigating Sorsby’s gambling, according to multiple media reports.

“Due to confidentiality rules put in place by NCAA member schools, the NCAA will not comment on current, pending or potential investigations,” the NCAA said Monday in a statement released to news organizations.

“However, the NCAA takes sports betting very seriously and is committed to the protection of student-athlete well-being and the integrity of competition. The Assn. works with integrity monitoring services, state regulators and other stakeholders to conduct appropriate due diligence whenever reports are received.”

The most recent NCAA guidelines about sports wagering state that student-athletes who bet on their own games or on other sports at their school could “potentially face permanent loss of collegiate eligibility.” Betting on their sport in games not involving their school could result in “the loss of 50% of one season of eligibility will be considered.”

Other violations could also result in loss of eligibility with the amount of time missed based on the amount of money wagered.

Sorsby spent two seasons at Indiana and two at Cincinnati before transferring to Texas Tech this offseason for his final year of eligibility. He has completed 61.4% of his passes for 7,208 yards with 60 touchdowns and 18 interceptions, and rushed for 1,295 yards and 22 touchdowns.

Cincinnati has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio against Sorsby for allegedly breaching the name, image and likeness contract he signed in July that stated a $1-million buyout would be required within 30 days if he transferred.

On Monday, Sorsby’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss, stating that “the parties’ contractual intent to pay Mr. Sorsby for playing football was fully realized, and UC’s attempt to now unlawfully penalize Mr. Sorsby for exercising his transfer right under the NCAA’s rules and UC’s efforts to discourage and threaten other players from doing the same thing is invalid as a matter of law.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Published on
23/04/2026 – 16:10 GMT+2

Météo-France has initiated an inquiry to determine whether the meteorological infrastructure managed by them was targeted by individuals seeking to influence prediction markets.

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This development follows reports of highly unusual temperature spikes that triggered significant financial payouts on the blockchain-based site Polymarket, where users place wagers on real-world events.

Investigators are examining if the integrity of the national weather network was breached through physical or digital interference, as the precision of the winning bets suggests the actors involved may have had direct control over the reported data.

Online rumors, which remain unverified for the time being, claim the temperature reading was manipulated by someone using a hair dryer to generate a higher temperature.

Polymarket reportedly settles Paris temperature bets on a single Météo-France sensor sitting near the Charles de Gaulle airport perimeter.

On 6 April, the reading from the sensor abruptly rose 4°C in twelve minutes, crossing the 22°C threshold despite data from other sources showing different figures.

A user on Polymarket aggressively bet on readings above 21°C on that specific day, even though the consensus was lower at 18°C, and profited almost €30,000.

A second similar anomaly occurred on 19 April leading to suspicions that the sensor was tampered with.

Météo-France announced that it has filed a complaint with the Roissy air transport gendarmerie brigade “for [the] alteration of the operation of an automated data processing system,” after an analysis of sensor data.

Polymarket suspended its reliance on the compromised weather data source for Paris, shifting its resolution metric from the sensor in Charles de Gaulle airport to the one in Paris-Le Bourget airport.

However, it did not cancel the contracts or refund the bets, leaving the resolved contracts final, even though on previous occasions it has suspended the resolution of certain bets until further clarification on the rules and circumstances.

Decentralised ‘oracles’ and prediction markets

This incident has reignited the debate over the reliability of the “oracles” that feed data to prediction markets in order to settle bets.

In decentralised finance, an oracle is the mechanism that feeds external, real-world information into a smart contract to determine a financial outcome.

Polymarket relies on these feeds to settle its contracts, often pulling data directly from official government websites. If the primary source of that data is corrupted, the betting market lacks any internal mechanism to verify the truth.

Additionally, the decentralised nature of these platforms makes it difficult to freeze assets even if an investigation identifies the individuals behind suspicious trades.

This is the latest case that highlights a new frontier of white-collar crime, where the manipulation of the physical world is used to exploit the vulnerabilities of automated prediction markets in order to win bets on real-world events.