Chauncey Billups
John Hefti-Imagn Images
On Thursday, the NBA was treated to its latest gambling scandal when three current and former players and coaches, including Chauncey Billups, were arrested on federal charges. The man who was at the helm for the Trail Blazers has been accused of taking part in rigged poker games organized by the mafia, and one guy who plays that card game for a living accused him of being in on the scheme more than two years before he ended up in the custody of the FBI.
NBA fans who slept in on Thursday morning were treated to quite a development when they woke up courtesy of Terry Rozier, Damon Jones, and Chauncey Billups, who were just three of the more than 30 people arrested in connection with a sweeping gambling investigation conducted by the FBI.
Rozier has been charged with pulling a Jontay Porter by tipping off gamblers who profited from games where he exited with a fake injury, while Jones allegedly used his friendship with LeBron James to gain knowledge about injuries he passed on to bettors who took advantage.
It initially seemed like it was safe to assume Billups had also illegally harnessed inside information for financial gain, and there’s some evidence that suggests that was the case. However, things took a pretty wild turn when we learned his arrest was primarily connected to a ring of mob-run poker games where his celebrity status was supposedly used to lure in rubes who fell victim to a sophisticated cheating operation.
Details of the rigged poker games that Damon Jones and Chauncey Billups were involved (from the US Attorney press conference):
+ X-ray machines built into tables to read face-down cards
+ Contact lenses/glasses that read pre-marked cards.
+ Secret cameras in card trays
— chad millman (@chadmillman) October 23, 2025
There had been some rumblings concerning those fishy games in the poker community before the scandal broke, and it’s certainly worth revisiting a clip of a pro player calling out Billups over his alleged involvement more than two years ago.
Pro poker player Matt Berkey publicly accused Chauncey Billups of participating in rigged games in 2023
Matt Berkey is a veteran poker player who’s officially earned close to $5 million in the tournaments he’s played in since 2006 (including the approximately $2 million he’s made at the World Series of Poker while making a final table 20 times).
He is also the host of the Only Friends podcast, and in an episode that was released on August 21, 2023, Berkey made it very clear he had reason to believe Billups was being used to attract unsuspecting marks to take part in the poker games they had no chance of winning.
In light of the Chauncey Billups arrest, we’ll just leave this here. (Ep. 277 8/21/23). @PatMcAfeeShow @PabloTorre pic.twitter.com/lZaUOY0bFb
— Only Friends Podcast (@OnlyFriends_Pod) October 23, 2025
Berkey noted he’d heard about the games in question as early as 2019, saying:
“There was this game—it started in LA and then it came to Vegas for a few days—and it was all built around Chauncey Billups. I had heard about the game, and the person who told me about it was like, ‘Look, I know the game runners. I am telling you 100% this game is on the up-and-up.
I was like, ‘Well, I know a lot of the people that are involved, and I’m telling you 100% that it is not on the up-and-up.’ We kind of went back and forth and I agreed that I just wasn’t going to go play it, but I had some friends who went and played it both in LA and in Vegas and it obviously was, for sure , confirmed to be cheating.”
Berkey also alluded to another game involving Paul Pierce that aroused similar suspicions, and when you consider people in the know have hinted there will likely be other notable names—including an NBA Hall of Famer—implicated as the investigation continues to unfold, this will be a very interesting situation to keep an eye on.