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Long-simmering gambling fears erupted into scandal Thursday morning as FBI agents arrested at least two high-profile NBA figures, including Hall of Fame guard and Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups, who authorities said was involved in a mob-run rigged poker scheme.
Agents also arrested Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, a former first-round draft pick, in Orlando. Authorities allege he participated in a sports betting operation that involved sharing information with bettors that wasn’t publicly available. He was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
In all, 31 people were arrested in connection with two cases, officials said. At a news conference Thursday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel said parallel investigations led to the “historic arrests,” spread across 11 states, and involved fraud that is “mind-boggling” — “tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multiyear investigation,” he said.
“Not only did we crack into the fraud that these perpetrators committed on the grand stage of the NBA,” Patel said, “but we also entered and executed a system of justice against La Cosa Nostra.”
The arrests were related to two separate investigations. One, called “Operation Royal Flush,” involved high-stakes poker games that were allegedly rigged. The FBI said that 13 members of the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families were involved in staging the games.
According to investigators, former athletes like Billups were used to lure unsuspecting players to the table. The basketball players were called “Face Cards” and “received a portion of the criminal proceeds in exchange for their participation in the Scheme,” according to an indictment. Everyone else at the table, from the big-name celebrity to the dealer, was aware the game was rigged with tampered shuffling machines, hidden cameras and even an “X-ray” table that could reveal cards, according to authorities.
An indictment filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court alleges only one instance of Billups participating in rigged games.
Prosecutors say Billups participated in games in Las Vegas around April 2019 that included a tampered shuffling machine. While the indictment states that the rigged poker schemes defrauded victims of $7.15 million in total, the games allegedly involved Billups defrauded victims of “at least $50,000."
According to a court filing, the game’s organizers talked about the impact Billups had on the other players at the table during an April 2019 game and also discussed having Billups lose a few hands to avoid suspicion of cheating after he had won too many improbable hands.
“The one guy on the end acted like he wanted Chauncey to have his money! He was star struck!” wrote one of the alleged co-conspirators in an exchange included in court filings.
The other case was dubbed by investigators “Nothing but Bet” and focused on suspicious betting activity involving NBA games that was traced back to inside information supplied by players.
“The years of investigative work that culminated with this morning’s operation seems reminiscent of a Hollywood movie,” said Ricky Patel, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, “but this wasn’t luck and this wasn’t theatrics.”
The early morning arrests also included former NBA player Damon Jones, who was implicated in both the poker case and the sports betting probe. Jones played parts of 11 seasons in the NBA, from 1998 to 2009, including five seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The felony charges threaten to send the basketball players and coach to prison for years, if prosecutors can earn convictions. Billups’ charges alone carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.
According to Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, from 2022-24, players including Jones and Rozier aided a network of bettors by supplying inside information that included when players would sit out games or when they might pull themselves early for “purported injuries or illnesses.”
“My message to the defendants rounded up today is this: Your winning streak has ended, your luck as run out,” said Nocella. “Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that.”
Spokespeople for the NBA, the Trail Blazers and the Heat did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday morning.
Billups, 49, appeared in five all-star games and was the NBA Finals MVP in 2004, as he helped lead his Detroit Pistons squad to a championship. He went into coaching shortly after retiring in 2014 and has been the head coach in Portland since 2021.
The Boston Celtics made Rozier the 16th overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft out of the University of Louisville. He was largely a role player there before finding the starting lineup with the Charlotte Hornets from 2019 to 2024. Rozier, 31, was traded to the Heat last January. He had been reportedly under investigation following unusual betting activity related to his performance in a 2023 game. The NBA cleared him of wrongdoing in July.
In a statement, Jim Trusty, Rozier’s lawyer, said that Rozier is “not a gambler” and that “he looks forward to winning this fight.” He called it a “non-case” and said investigators had previously characterized the player “as a subject, not a target.”
“[But] at 6 a.m. this morning they called to tell me FBI agents were trying to arrest him in a hotel,” he said. “It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self-surrender they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case. They appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing.”
Rozier was expected to appear in federal court in Orlando on Thursday afternoon, and Billups was due in a Portland courtroom. According to court filings, prosecutors are not seeking to detain Billups pending trial.
Legal sports betting became widespread in the United States with the fall of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) in 2018. Thirty-eight states and Washington, D.C., offer some form of legal sports gambling. Although professional sports leagues like the NBA have partnered with gambling operators and cashed in on the arrangement, they’ve also been wary about pitfalls posed by rampant wagering.
Federal investigators have reportedly been looking into suspicious gambling activity involving former Detroit Pistons guard Malik Beasley, centered on games from the 2023-2024 season. Beasley, currently a free agent, has not been charged with any crimes.
And in 2024, Jontay Porter, a former Toronto Raptors player, was given a lifetime ban from the NBA over accusations of giving confidential information to bettors and placing bets on NBA games. He pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with the scandal.
Nocella said Porter was threatened by some of the men charged Thursday, made susceptible “because of his preexisting gambling debts.”
“Defendants used this nonpublic information to place hundreds of thousands of dollars of fraudulent bets, mostly in the form of prop bets on individual player performance,” Nocella said. “ … The defendants relied on a network of straw bettors to place the maximum amount of bets to potentially increase their profits. Most of these bets succeeded, and the losses were in the millions of dollars.”