Chauncey Billups Arrest: Poker Scheme Charges, Plea, and Defense

Chauncey Billups, the former NBA Finals MVP and head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was arrested on October 23, 2025 and charged with federal conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering for his alleged role in a mob-backed rigged poker operation. He pleaded not guilty, was released on a $5 million bond, and is scheduled to stand trial on November 2, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.¹² Each charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.³

What Prosecutors Say Billups Did

The indictment identifies Billups as a “Face Card”: a well-known athlete recruited to lend legitimacy to underground high-stakes poker games and draw in wealthy players, who were then cheated using rigged equipment. Prosecutors say organizers of one game texted each other that a victim “acted like he wanted Chauncey to have his money” because he was “star struck.”⁴

The government’s most concrete allegation against Billups personally is a $50,000 wire transfer he allegedly received following an October 2020 game, which prosecutors describe as payment from the scheme’s proceeds.⁴ The indictment also alleges that Billups was told to “lose on purpose” during games when his winning streaks threatened to draw suspicion from the victims.⁵ Former NBA player Damon Jones is named as another Face Card, and in April 2026 became the first defendant to plead guilty; Jones admitted he knew the games were fixed and was paid $2,500 per session.⁶

How the Alleged Poker Scheme Worked

According to the 22-page indictment, the operation ran from at least 2019 and defrauded victims of more than $7 million, with backing from the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese crime families.¹⁷ At the center of the scheme were altered DeckMate 2 card shufflers. The machines’ internal cameras, designed to verify deck integrity, were repurposed through a USB port vulnerability so the software could read and transmit the order of every card.⁸⁹¹⁰

Additional cheating tools allegedly included hidden cameras in chip trays, “X-ray” tables that could read face-down cards, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses for reading pre-marked decks.¹ Games ran in Manhattan, East Hampton, Las Vegas, Miami, and Los Angeles.⁵ When victims refused to pay suspected cheating losses, the indictment alleges conspirators used threats and violence to collect.

The nationwide takedown, called “Operation Royal Flush,” produced a seven-count indictment against more than 30 people across 11 states.¹ FBI Director Kash Patel called it a “historic arrest across a wide-sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.”¹¹

Plea, Bond, and Release Conditions

Billups appeared the afternoon of the arrest before a federal judge at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland and was released on conditions including surrender of his passport, travel restrictions, and a prohibition on gambling.¹²

On November 24, 2025, he appeared before U.S. District Judge Ramon Reyes in Brooklyn and pleaded not guilty to both counts. His attorney, Marc Mukasey of Mukasey Young LLC, entered the plea.¹³ Billups was released on a $5 million bond secured by his family’s home in Colorado.² His conditions restrict travel to seven states and Washington, D.C., bar contact with co-defendants or alleged victims, prohibit all gambling, and require him to report financial transactions over $25,000.

The Defense Position

Billups’ legal team has denied the charges outright. His initial attorney, Chris Heywood, said publicly that “to believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his Hall of Fame legacy, his reputation and his freedom” for a card game.¹⁰ Billups later retained Mukasey to lead the defense.¹⁴

Criminal defense attorneys not involved in the case have raised specific questions about the strength of the evidence against Billups. Portland lawyer Ron Hoevet noted that Billups is mentioned only twice in the indictment and that the only games tying him to the conspiracy occurred in April 2019, which may fall outside the five-year federal statute of limitations. A New York defense lawyer told the same outlet that proving wire fraud requires showing false representations, which may be harder where the games were illegal from the outset and participants were operating in an environment where deception was expected.¹⁵

Observers also point to the lack of an obvious financial motive. Billups earned approximately $107 million during his NBA playing career and millions more as a coach, making the alleged proceeds relatively small.¹⁵

What He Faces If Convicted

The statutory maximum on each of the two conspiracy counts is 20 years.³ Guideline exposure is typically lower. If prosecutors succeed in tying Billups to the full $7.2 million conspiracy loss, federal sentencing guidelines could produce a range of roughly seven to nine years in prison.¹⁵

Impact on His Coaching Job

Within hours of the arrest, the NBA placed Billups on immediate leave from the Trail Blazers, saying “the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”³ Portland named assistant coach Tiago Splitter as interim head coach.¹⁶

The team initially held off on formally firing Billups, a decision analysts tied to “moral turpitude” clauses common in NBA coaching contracts; waiting for a conviction or plea would let the team void his guaranteed contract rather than pay it out.¹⁷ By mid-2026, Portland had hired Micah Nori as its new head coach.¹⁸

Where the Case Stands

All 31 defendants in the poker case appeared before Judge Reyes on March 4, 2026 for a status conference. Prosecutors said plea negotiations with at least nine defendants had been “productive” and that they expected to offer formal plea agreements to roughly a dozen.¹⁹ The government had by then produced more than 4.5 terabytes of discovery, including over 100,000 pages of bank and phone records and roughly 259 hours of audio and video recordings across 1,580 files. As of June 2026, the origins of those recordings had not been publicly disclosed.²⁰

Judge Reyes set trial for November 2, 2026 and denied a prosecution request to push the date to January 2027.²⁰ With 31 defendants, the court has acknowledged the group is too large to try together, and prosecutors and defense attorneys are working out how to split it into manageable groups.²¹ Billups has not accepted a plea deal, and his acceptance of the November trial date signals he intends to fight the charges.²²

1
U.S. Department of Justice. 31 Defendants Including Members and Associates of Organized Crime Families Arrested
2
CBS News. Chauncey Billups Pleads Not Guilty in Mafia-Linked Illegal Poker Case
3
ESPN. Terry Rozier Arrested as Part of Gambling Inquiry
4
PBS NewsHour. Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups Pleads Not Guilty in Rigged Poker Games Case
5
NBC News. Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier Arrested in Federal Gambling-Related Investigation
6
ESPN. Ex-NBA Player Damon Jones First to Plead Guilty in Gambling Case
7
CBS News. NBA Arrests Rigged Poker Games Crime Families FBI
8
Wired. How Hacked Card Shufflers Allegedly Enabled a Mob-Fueled Poker Scam
9
NPR. FBI Says Card Shuffling Machines Were Hacked as Part of Major Illegal Gambling Schemes
10
Yahoo Sports. How Chauncey Billups Allegedly Helped the Mafia Cheat Players Out of Millions
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C-SPAN. FBI Director Patel News Conference on Basketball Gambling Probe Arrests
12
ABC News. Miami Heat’s Terry Rozier, Trail Blazers’ Chauncey Billups Among Those Arrested
13
NY1. Chauncey Billups Pleads Not Guilty in Rigged Poker Games Case
14
The Oregonian. Trail Blazers’ Chauncey Billups Hires Prominent New Defense Attorney
15
Willamette Week. The Federal Case Against Chauncey Billups Looks Flimsy to Criminal Lawyers
16
KATU. Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups Arrested in Gambling Operation Scandal
17
Blazer’s Edge. Chauncey Billups and the Portland Trail Blazers Summary
18
The Oregonian. Potential Replacements for Coach Chauncey Billups
19
The New York Times / The Athletic. Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones Plea Deal Agreements
20
LA Mag. 259 Hours of Secret Recordings Loom Over NBA Mob Case
21
ESPN. Trial Date Set for Chauncey Billups, Others in Rigged Poker Case
22
Hoops Rumors. Chauncey Billups Appears in Court for Status Update Hearing