Portland Trail Blazers head coach and former Detroit Pistons legendary point guard Chauncey Billups was arrested by the FBI on Thursday morning to face charges related to his alleged role in a “complex fraud scheme to rig, or cheat at, illegal poker games” throughout the United States.
Billups, along with more than 30 other defendants, was charged in connection with the illegal poker scheme that allegedly cheated victims out of millions of dollars. The DOJ tied some of the illegal poker games to New York mafia families, who are also implicated in an indictment unsealed on Thursday.
In April 2019, Billups — along with defendants Eric Earnest, Jaimie Gilet, Robert Stroud, and Sophia Wei — set up a rigged poker game in Las Vegas and proceeded to defraud victims of at least $50,000, according to the indictment. Billups and the other co-defendants allegedly used a card-shuffling machine rigged to read the cards in the deck and then send the information to an off-site operator over interstate wires. The off-site operator then communicated via phone with someone at the table, called the “quarterback,” who was charged with using secret signals to pass that information along to the others who were in on the rigging, the feds allege.
The rigged shuffling machine was provided to Billups and the other co-conspirators in Las Vegas by defendant Robert Stroud, the indictment states. In 2023, Stroud allegedly conspired with other defendants to rob a person at gunpoint to steal a specific model of a rigged shuffling machine that they wanted to use for poker games.
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United States Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. alleged at a press conference on Thursday morning that Billups was vital to the rigged poker game because victims, known as “fish,” would be lured into the games “by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes, who were known as ‘Face Cards.’” The victims believed they were playing in “straight” illegal poker games, unknowingly sitting down at a table filled with conspirators in a fraud scheme, the indictment alleges.
The cheaters also used technologies, such as hidden cameras and an X-ray table that had the ability to read cards placed face down on the table, Nocella said. The rigged poker games in New York City were often overseen by the Bonanno, Lucchese, Gambino, and Genovese crime families, who took a cut of the proceeds and “used threats and intimidation to assure payment of debts” from the rigged poker games, according to the indictment.
“The defendants laundered their proceeds including through cash exchanges, the use of multiple shell companies, and through cryptocurrency transfers,” Nocella added.
Billups, an NBA champion who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame last year, faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is expected to make his first court appearance in Portland on Thursday.
The illegal poker scheme indictment was announced alongside another indictment, which alleges that six people, including a current and former NBA player, revealed insider information to gamblers. Billups was not charged in the alleged illegal sports betting scheme, but multiple people were implicated in both indictments, including former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones.
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