A former Philly police lieutenant who made $60,000 from an illegal gambling ring was sentenced to house arrest

A former Philadelphia police lieutenant was sentenced Thursday to one day in jail and three months of house arrest for helping oversee a long-running illegal gambling ring with a former city probation officer.

James P. DeAngelo Jr. apologized for his role in the scheme, saying in court that he had been a lifelong gambling addict who had never sought appropriate treatment before he was arrested last year.

Since then, DeAngelo said, he has been voluntarily attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings, and has come to recognize the negative impact that gambling had on his family and professional life.

“I don’t want to hurt my wife again,” he said, “and I don’t want to disappoint my kids.”

From 2017 through 2025, prosecutors said, DeAngelo worked alongside former probation officer Joseph Moore to help connect bettors to a variety of forms of sports bets. Those included “block pools” based on NFL or NCAA basketball games, prosecutors said, as well as regular wagers from bettors on other contests.

DeAngelo helped maintain the operation’s access to an overseas gambling site, prosecutors said, and sometimes accepted wagers from individual bettors. His personal profit from the operation was about $60,000, prosecutors said.

Moore, meanwhile, had a “much more serious role” in the scheme, prosecutors said — sending mass emails to hundreds of bettors advertising pools he was running, collecting a percentage of the bets as his “tip,” and allowing some bettors to place wagers on credit.

Moore sometimes took bets out of his probation office, prosecutors said, and saved records from the operation on his work computer.

Moore was sentenced earlier this month to one day in jail and one year of house arrest, along with three years of supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Mark Kearney said that DeAngelo also would serve three years of supervised release, but that he would be able to continue working and caring for his elderly parents.

DeAngelo said the FBI knocking on his door served as a “wake-up call.” Several of his relatives had been longtime gamblers, he said, and they exposed him to casinos and slot machines at an early age, which caused him to view involvement in gambling as normal.

Kearney commended DeAngelo for seeking to turn his life around but pointed out that it occurred only after DeAngelo was prosecuted through the law enforcement system that he had once sworn to uphold.

“Your addiction,” Kearney said, “is no different than the dopamine hit from a guy you used to arrest.”