Chauncey Billups, an NBA Hall of Fame player and head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, and Terry Rozier, a guard with the Miami Heat, were among more than 30 people charged on Thursday (October 23) in connection with two separate but related federal gambling investigations that involved the league and the Mafia.
The schemes - one of them focused on insider sports betting and another that rigged poker games nationwide - spanned years and involved tens of millions of dollars in illicit gains from wire fraud, money laundering, extortion and gambling, FBI Director Kash Patel said at a press conference in Brooklyn on Thursday.
Rozier was one of several National Basketball Association insiders who allegedly provided non-public information about upcoming games to their criminal partners, who in turn used straw bettors to place multiple bets based on the tips, authorities said.
READ: Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier arrested in illegal gambling probes
In March 2023, for instance, Rozier told associates in advance he would leave a game early with a supposed injury, allowing them to bet more than $200,000 that he would not reach his expected statistical totals for the game, officials said.
Rozier's attorney Jim Trusty pushed back against the allegations, saying the player's March 2023 injury was legitimate.
Trusty added that Rozier had already been cleared by investigators.
"They interviewed him twice. They took his phone, downloaded everything," he said. "At the end of the day, they said, 'There's nothing to see here.' But now we got a trophy hunt so we're gonna fight it."
"This is the insider trading saga for the NBA," Patel said.
Villanova University sports law professor Andrew Brandt said the scandal reflects how vulnerable pro leagues have become since legal sports betting exploded nationwide.
"It is certainly not a stretch to see what we saw today, which is that ensnared in all of this sports betting, are active athletes and to an extent, coaches, with their unique and inside information that can be leveraged by bettors," Brandt said. "I'm a little surprised we haven't seen this before."
Billups was charged in a separate case with helping to rig poker games to defraud unknowing players lured to the games with the promise of playing against celebrities, officials said. The defendants employed sophisticated technology to fix the games in New York, Las Vegas, Miami and elsewhere, including fraudulent card shufflers and x-ray tables.
That scheme also involved the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese organized crime families in New York, which controlled some of the underground poker games in the city where the rigging took place, officials said. The families took a cut of the profits, used extortion and robbery to collect unpaid debts and laundered proceeds through cryptocurrency and other means, according to prosecutors.
While the arrests stemmed from two separate indictments, a handful of defendants were charged in both cases, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella said, including former Cleveland Cavaliers player and assistant coach Damon Jones.
READ: Gambling scandal shows dangers of NBA's embrace of betting
SCRUTINY ON SPORTS BETTING
A close up shot of NBA Legend, Chauncey Billups on the court before the Memphis Grizzlies game against the LA Clippers on January 4, 2020 at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California. Chris Elise, NBAE via Getty Images/AFP
In a statement, the NBA said Rozier and Billups had been placed on leave and that the league would continue to cooperate with authorities.
"We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority," the statement said.
The Trail Blazers said the team was "fully cooperating with the investigation" and that assistant coach Tiago Splitter would take over as interim head coach.
Brandt said the arrests cast a shadow on what should have been a celebratory week for the league.
"It's not good. The NBA started the other night, a lot of excitement — the world champions get their rings, big games. That excitement is now tempered because of this scandal," he said. "What a stain on the opening of the NBA season."
The arrests are likely to increase scrutiny of the relationship between online sportsbooks and professional sports leagues, which have reaped the benefits of a massive expansion in legalized betting even as they also sought to assure fans and gamblers that the integrity of their games was unaffected.
Some lawmakers have expressed concern about the proliferation of bets that could be most easily manipulated by players, such as prop bets, in which bettors can wager on whether an individual player will hit or miss specific statistical totals in a given game.
READ: NBA chief Silver grapples with illegal betting scandal
PLAYERS PUNISHED
Several players in the "Big Four" North American men's leagues - the NBA, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League - have faced punishment for gambling in recent years.
Former NBA player Jontay Porter was banned from the league for life and pleaded guilty in 2024 after he was accused of manipulating his performance to help associates win wagers on his play, a case linked to Thursday's indictment.
READ: NBA bans Raptors forward Jontay Porter for life over gambling violations
Brandt noted Porter's case foreshadowed the issues now facing Rozier.
"What we had last year in the NBA — a player named Jontay Porter — was kicked out of the league for giving inside information to his fellow gamblers," he said. "Now the focus is on Terry Rozier … and that's where manipulation can happen with these proposition bets."
Billups, 49, is in his fifth year as Portland's head coach. He played for seven teams during his NBA career and won a championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. He was expected to make an initial court appearance on Thursday in Portland.
Rozier, 31, is in his 11th NBA season. His 2025-26 salary is $26.6 million, according to the sports contract tracking website Spotrac. He was arrested in Orlando, Florida, where the Heat played on Wednesday night. He was expected to appear in court there on Thursday.
(Octavio Jones, Hussein Al Waaile, Roselle Chen)