Federal prosecutors say Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups participated in rigged poker games, using his celebrity status to attract gamblers to play in fixed games.
Billups, 49, was among more than 30 people indicted Thursday in two separate cases involving NBA figures.
Billups, who was scheduled to appear in court Thursday afternoon, is accused of money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy in the alleged 2019 poker scheme.
Someone matching his credentials is also accused of providing insider information in a separate sports-betting scheme in 2023, though Billups is not among the named defendants facing charges in that case.
Billups’ lawyer Chris Heywood said the Trail Blazers coach was arrested around 5 a.m. on Thursday at his Lake Oswego home, but he declined further comment on the indictments until after Billups appeared in court on Thursday afternoon.
The poker scheme:
Billups and others allegedly organized and participated in a rigged game in Las Vegas around April 2019, according to a federal indictment. They allegedly used a rigged shuffling machine to defraud other players of at least $50,000.
The indictment accuses Billups and another former professional basketball player of participating in the rigged games as “face cards,” attracting other people to the game and receiving a cut of the proceeds in exchange.
Read the indictment:
The sports betting scheme:
A second indictment in a sports-betting case does not name Billups but suggests someone who matches his credentials provided insider information that enabled others to bet against the Blazers during a basketball game in 2023.
Prosecutors said conspirators in the sports-betting scheme used inside information on which players would sit out games and whether they would take themselves out of games for purported injuries. It involved several teams, including the Trail Blazers.
Billups is not among the six defendants facing criminal charges in the sports-betting scheme. But federal prosecutors identified “Co-Conspirator 8″ as an NBA player from 1997 through 2014, who coached since 2021 and lived in Oregon — a description that matches Billups.
“Co-Conspirator 8″ told one of the defendants in the scheme, a Missouri man named Eric Earnest, that the team would be tanking to improve its draft odds and several of the Blazers’ best players would not suit up in a game on March 24, 2023, before that information was publicly known, according to the indictment.
Read the second indictment:
- Reporters Joe Freeman, Mike Rogoway and Maxine Bernstein contributed to this report.
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