Jones is accused of participating in rigged poker games and profiting off of insider betting information related to his close friend, LeBron James.
BROOKLYN (CN) — Former NBA player Damon Jones is out on bail Thursday after pleading not guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy charges in a pair of illegal gambling indictments.
The 10-year league veteran was released on a $200,000 bail in both cases. His mother and stepfather will be acting as Jones’ bail sureties, secured by their Texas home, according to Jones’ court-appointed lawyer Kenneth Montgomery.
Jones, who sipped orange Gatorade from the defense table, acknowledged in court Thursday that he may be considering a plea deal with the government in at least one of the cases.
“You may be engaged in plea negotiations with the government, is that correct?,” asked U.S. District Judge Ramon Reyes, a Joe Biden appointee in the Eastern District of New York. Jones agreed that it was.
The 48-year-old is accused of participating in two mob-linked gambling schemes. In one, prosecutors say the journeyman guard used his status to share inside information about player injuries with bettors. One of those players, according to the indictment, appears to be LeBron James, Jones’ former teammate and longtime friend.
James, who appears to be referred to as “Player 3” in the indictment, is not accused of wrongdoing.
“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out! [Player 3] is out tonight,” Jones texted a co-conspirator on Feb. 9, 2023, according to prosecutors. “Bet enough so Djones can eat [too] now!!!”
James wound up sitting out that game due to ankle soreness, and his Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Milwaukee Bucks 115-106.
Current NBA player Terry Rozier is also charged in that indictment, accused of prematurely exiting at least one game so that co-conspirators’ “under” bets on Rozier would cash. He has not yet entered a plea in the case.
Sports betting influencer Marves Fairley, who is accused of cashing in on that insider information, also pleaded not guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy on Thursday in the same courtroom as Jones. He was also released on a $200,000 bond, secured by his wife, his church pastor and the superintendent of schools in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi, where Fairley lives.
In the second indictment, Jones is accused of playing in rigged, mob-backed poker games to defraud unsuspecting players out of millions of dollars. Prosecutors say the defendants used intricate cheating technologies like poker chip trays with hidden cameras, special contact lenses or glasses that read premarked cards and even an X-ray table that reads face-down hands.
They also used shuffling machines that could read cards as they doled them, prosecutors claim, informing an off-site operator of who had the best hand at the table. The operator would then text that information to one of the players, dubbed the “quarterback” or the “driver,” who would use signals to instruct co-conspirators how to bet.
Jones and NBA Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups — coach of the Portland Trail Blazers — were referred to as “face cards,” according to the indictment, which were what co-conspirators supposedly called the well-known former pro athletes used to attract victims, or “fish,” to the rigged games. In exchange, the “face cards” got a cut of the fraudulent winnings, prosecutors say.
Billups was also charged in the indictment and has not yet entered a plea. More than two dozen people in total were charged in connection with the poker games, which prosecutors say dated back to 2019 and swindled victims out of more than $7.1 million.
Federal prosecutors announced the two sprawling indictments last month. Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that the investigations are “very much ongoing.”
In addition to the high-profile former athletes, members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families were also charged.
Categories / Criminal, Sports
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