Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups Arrested In Mobbed-Up Poker Case
Billups, the former NBA star, was arrested along with more than 30 other people in the case
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The FBI on Thursday announced the arrests of more than 30 people connected to a series of gambling and racketeering schemes, including a rigged poker operation that federal prosecutors say spanned from New York to Las Vegas and involved members of organized crime and former NBA stars.
Among those charged were Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, who prosecutors allege took part in a sophisticated cheating ring that used hidden technology, mob connections, and celebrity allure to fleece wealthy players.
U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr., who leads the Eastern District of New York, said the case began several years ago and evolved into a multi-state fraud operation.
“Beginning as early as 2019, the defendants in this case orchestrated 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,” Nocella said at a news conference.
The operation, he said, targeted wealthy amateurs, and it cost them over $7 million, according to New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
“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,’ ” Nocella said. “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.”
The celebrity presence gave the games an air of legitimacy. In reality, Nocella said, “What the victims, the fish, didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam. Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, per game.”
High technology
According to prosecutors, the group relied on a suite of high-tech tools to steal from their marks.
“The defendants used a variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies, some of which were provided by other defendants in exchange for a share of the profits from the scheme,” Nocella said. “For example, they used off-the-shelf shuffling machines that had been secretly altered in order to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information to an off-site operator.”
That operator would then transmit the data to a designated insider.
“The off-site operator sent the information via cell phone back to a co-conspirator at the table, and that person at the table was known as the quarterback,” Nocella said. “The quarterback then signaled secretly the information he had received from others to others at the table, and together they used that information in order to win their games and to cheat the victims.”
Billups and company used even more dubious methods to allegedly “win” their money, according to the allegations.
“Defendants used other cheating technologies such as poker chip tray analyzers, which is a poker chip tray that secretly reads cards using a hidden camera, special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards, and an X-ray table that could read cards face down on the table,” Nocella said.
Mob ties
Federal agents say the scheme quickly attracted the attention of New York’s most entrenched crime families.
“The Mafia, specifically members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese organized crime families, had pre-existing control over non-rigged illegal poker games around New York City,” Nocella said. “As a result, they also became involved in the rigged poker games, helping to organize the games and taking a cut of the proceedings and working to enforce the collection of debts.”
Some participants, he added, resorted to threats and violence.
“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,” Nocella said.
Prosecutors charged the poker ring participants with wire fraud conspiracy, along with a range of related crimes.
