Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups were among more than 30 people arrested Thursday morning in connection with two separate indictments that deal with illegal poker and sports betting schemes.
When the indictments were announced, we reported on the statements from FBI Director Kash Patel and the larger scope of the charges brought against Rozier, Billups, and their co-defendants, but there are more details available about the machinations of the schemes they were allegedly involved in and the roles that both played.
Rozier indicted in NBA game gambling scheme
“This is the insider trading saga for the NBA,” Patel said in Thursday’s press conference.
United States Attorney for the Eastern District Joseph Nocella Jr. stated that Rozier was connected to the first indictment, which “involves six defendants who are alleged to have participated in one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States. This scheme is an insider sports betting conspiracy that exploited confidential information about National Basketball Association athletes and teams.”
The defendants in the NBA Basketball gambling case are Eric Earnest, Shane Hennen, Marves Fairley, Deniro Laster, former Cleveland Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones, and Rozier.
“Between December 2022 and March 2024, these defendants perpetrated a scheme to defraud by betting on inside non-public information about NBA athletes and teams,” explained Nocella Jr. “The non-public information included when specific players would be sitting out future games or when they would pull themselves out early for purported injuries or illnesses. They relied on corrupt individuals, including Jones and Rozier.”
The indictment suggests that the co-conspirators disseminated this non-public betting information through a network of individuals to place bets themselves and/or on behalf of the co-conspirators. NBA players are expressly prohibited from betting on league games as part of the CBA, something detailed to players before each season in a player conduct memo.
Other co-conspirators were previously charged for their roles in the scheme, including former NBA player Jontay Porter, who pleadedguilty to wire fraud back in July 2024. He received a lifetime NBA ban after it was discovered that he not only bet on the Raptors to lose, but also pretended to be hurt for gambling purposes and shared confidential information with gamblers.
The potential connection between Rozier and Porter was first mentioned by an unknown social media account on NBA Twitter known as @FreeMoose_NBA. When Pablo Torre investigated that connection back in July, he found that the probe was more far-reaching than initially anticipated, which is what the FBI confirmed today.
Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, gave a statement to NBC Sports and said his client planned to fight the charges:
“We have represented Terry Rozier for over a year,” Trusty said in the statement. “A long time ago, we reached out to these prosecutors to tell them we should have an open line of communication. They characterized Terry 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. 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 in-credible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing. Terry was cleared by the NBA, and these prosecutors revived that non-case. Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”
According to the indictment, the Department of Justice feels as though they have enough concrete evidence to pursue charges against Rozier, who was the 16th overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft after averaging 17.1 points, 5.6 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 2.0 steals a game as a sophomore for the Louisville Cardinals team that made the Elite Eight. The 10-year veteran played five years with the Celtics and four years with the Hornets before being traded to the Heat midway through the 2023-24 season for Kyle Lowry and a 2027 first-round pick.
Rozier played 64 games for Miami last season, starting 23 of them, while averaging 10.6 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 2.6 assists in nearly 26 minutes per game. However, much of the federal investigation into him stems from his time with the Hornets.
Specifically, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch cited a game on March 23, 2023, in Charlotte. Terry Rozier, playing for the Hornets at the time, “allegedly let others close to him know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury.”
Deniro Laster, a co-defendant, was then paid $100,000 for that information by another co-defendant Marves Fairley. The information was shared further so that others, like co-defendant Shane Hennen, could bet on it. On that particular day, $259,000 was wagered on prop bets featuring Rozier unders, and the guard left that game after playing just 9 minutes and 34 seconds.
The indictment then alleges that Fairley, Laster, and Hennen were all in Philadelphia on March 28th in order to collect the proceeds from the successful wagers placed just a week earlier. Laster then is said to have driven to Rozier’s home in Charlotte, North Carolina, to give Rozier his cut of the money.
The scheme then had another layer as the co-conspirators, including Rozier, tried to conceal the profits that were derived from the bets. “The defendants then laundered their illegal winnings in various ways, including peer-to-peer platforms, bank wires, and simple cash exchanges,” according to Nocella Jr.
Amidst this federal investigation, the NBA conducted its own investigation and cleared Rozier this summer. He returned to training camp and was on the Heat’s active roster for their opening night game on Wednesday against the Magic. He did not see any minutes in that game and was later arrested on Thursday morning while the Heat were still in Orlando, Florida.
The indictment also mentions that Damon Jones’ involvement in this scheme stems from his relationship with a “prominent NBA player.” Jones played in the NBA from 1999 to 2008 and spent three seasons with the Cavaliers. He was also an assistant coach on the Cavaliers from 2014 to 2018 and an “unofficial assistant coach” on the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2022-23 season.
During these years, Jones was a teammate of said “prominent NBA player,” who the indictment only lists as “Player 3”; however, the other details of the indictment appear to point to LeBron James. During those years, Jones is said to have secretly used his access to “medical information that had not been released to the public” to sell tips for Earic Earnest and Marves Fairley to place wagers on the Lakers.
One specific instance occurred during a game between the Lakers and Bucks on February 9th, 2023, in which Jones texted another unnamed co-conspirator, “Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out! [Player 3] is out tonight.”
LeBron James did indeed sit out that game with a sore left ankle, and the Bucks won 115-106.
Jones would allegedly try to sell inside medical information throughout that season and the 2023-24 season; however, the indictment seems to make it clear that neither James nor any players had any knowledge that this was happening.
Interestingly, the indictment against Rozier also mentions a game on March 24th, 2023, between the Chicago Bulls and Portland Trail Blazers, neither of which Rozier played for. Before that game, an unnamed “Co-Conspirator 8” is said to have told Earnest that the Trail Blazers were “going to be tanking to increase their odds of getting a better draft pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.” Earnest then sold this information to Fairley for $5,000, so that Fairley could place bets before the sportsbooks knew that certain players would be sitting out the game.
Fairley and another co-conspirator placed multiple bets totaling more than $100,000 that the Trail Blazers would lose the game. The indictment notes that “Player 1,” an unnamed key player on the Trail Blazers, was listed as “probable” until 30 minutes before tip-off, when an updated injury report listed him, and others as being “out” for the game. The players who were listed as “out” wound up being the four highest scoring players on the team, which we now know were Damian Lillard, Jusuf Nurkic, Jerami Grant, and Anfernee Simons.
While there is no name listed for co-conspirator 8, who gave this information to Earnest, the indictment states that this person “was a resident in Oregon” and “was an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021.” That profile fits Chauncey Billups, who was the head coach of the Trail Blazers during this game.
Billups indicted in illegal poker game scheme
While Billups is not openly mentioned in the illegal sports betting indictment, he is named as a defendant in the second indictment, about illegal poker games, which is a completely separate case.
The second indictment involves 31 defendants, who, according to Nocella Jr., are “alleged to have participated in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games. These defendants, who include former professional athletes, used high-tech cheating technology to steal millions of dollars from victims in underground poker games that were secretly fixed. The games in the New York area were backed by the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime families of La Cosa Nostra.”
According to Nocella Jr., the rigged poker game case began as early as 2019, and was “a scheme to use wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games across the United States, including in the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Miami, and Manhattan.”
“The scheme targeted victims known as ‘fish,’ who were often lured to participate in these rigged games by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes who were known as ‘face cards,’ explained Nocella Jr. “The so-called face cards included the defendant, Chauncey Billups, who at the time of the scheme was a former NBA player and is currently the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and also Damon Jones, a former NBA player and coach.”
Billups, Jones, and the other defendants are alleged to have “fleeced” the victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars per game by using “a variety of sophisticated cheating technologies,” including off-the-shelf shuffling machines that had been altered to read the cards in the deck, predict which player had the best hand. They also allegedly used poker chip tray analyzers that could read cards using a hidden camera, special contact lenses or glasses that read marked cards, and an X-ray table that could read cards that were face down on the table.
The information about what cards a “fish” held was electronically relayed to an off-site operator, who sent the information via cell phone back to one of the defendants at the table, known as the “quarterback,” who then “used secret signaling to share the information with the other members of the Cheating Teams playing in the Rigged Games,” thus defrauding the victims who thought they were playing in “square,” or fair, games.
In all, from games detailed in New York, Miami, Las Vegas (where Billups played), and other locals, the co-conspirators defrauded victims of more than $7.1 million, according to the indictment.
The defendants are then alleged to have “laundered their proceeds, including through cash exchanges, the use of multiple shell companies, and through cryptocurrency transfers.” Additionally, as part of the scheme, “some of the defendants and their co-conspirators also committed acts of violence, including the gunpoint robbery of a person in order to obtain a rigged shuffling machine and extortions that were perpetrated against victims in order to ensure that they repaid their gambling debts.”
Billups was arrested in Portland on Thursday, the morning after he coached the Trail Blazers in their season-opening loss to the Timberwolves.
When approached for comment on Thursday, the Portland Trail Blazers said: “We are aware of the allegations involving head coach Chauncey Billups, and the Trail Blazers are fully cooperating with the investigation. Billups has been placed on immediate leave, and Tiago Splitter will assume head coaching duties in the interim. Any further questions should be directed to the NBA.”
Before becoming a head coach, Billups was a 17-year NBA player, mostly for the Detroit Pistons, and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024. He was a five-time All-Star and led the Pistons to an NBA title in 2004, in which he was named Finals MVP. After retiring in 2014, Billups worked as an NBA analyst for ESPN and spent one season as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2020-21 season. The Portland Trail Blazers then hired him as their head coach for the 2021 season.
Billups is now in his 5th season as Portland’s head coach and has posted a 117-212 (.356) winning percentage. Despite his poor overall record, his player development skills on a team seen as ascending in the West led toBillups signing a multi-year extension with the team in April.
Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups will appear in the federal courts where they were arrested, Rozier in Orlando and Billups in Portland. They will be arraigned on their indictments in Brooklyn at a later date.