NBA’s Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups among nationwide arrests in connection to illegal betting

Miami Heat player Trent Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups | Via CBS News

Dozens of people, including former and current NBA players and a coach, have been charged in connection to two investigations into an alleged widespread sports betting scheme and organized crime ring, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced Thursday.

Among those taken into custody today are Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier, who has played for the Miami Heat since 2024. Billups, a former star guard who played for multiple NBA teams, was arrested in Portland, and Rozier was arrested in Orlando.

The NBA said in a statement that Rozier and Billups were being put on leave, and that the league would cooperate with authorities.

Former NBA player Damon Jones was also arrested in connection to the sports betting charges investigation.

The arrests were made in relation to two federal criminal cases. One of them involves a sports betting ring including former and current NBA players, some of whom allegedly faked injuries. In the other case, organized crime figures are alleged to have operated illegal high-stakes poker games involving coaches. Three people, including Jones, were arrested in connection to both schemes, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Thirty-one people are being charged in the second case, and some of those defendants are allegedly connected to organized crime families known to law enforcement, prosecutors said. Rozier was among the six arrested in connection with the first case, while Billups was one of the 31 arrested in connection to the second case.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the charges and the arrests in both cases include wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery and illegal gambling.

Patel called the arrests “extraordinary,” and he said they stemmed from a “coordinated takedown across 11 states.”

“Not only did we crack into the fraud that these perpetrators committed on the grand stage of the NBA, but we have also interred and executed a system of justice against La Cosa Nostra to include the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families,” Patel said.

Joseph Nocella, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the defendants allegedly used a “variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies,” including self-shuffling machines that had been secretly altered to read the cards in the deck and predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, which was then allegedly sent to an off-site operator. The off-site operator then allegedly sent the information via cell phone to the co-conspirator at the table, who was known as the quarterback. The quarterback then allegedly secretly signaled the information to others and at the table, and together, they used that information to win the games, Nocella said.

Nocella said that in the first case that allegedly involves Rozier, the defendants are accused of having profited off of games played by the Charlotte Hornets, Portland Trail Blazers, the L.A. Lakers and the Toronto Raptors. The defendants allegedly used non-public information to place bets of hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly in the form of prop bets on individual player performance in games, Nocella said.

“Most of these bets succeeded, and the intended losses were in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Nocella said. “The defendants then laundered their illegal winnings in various ways — peer-to-peer platforms, bank wires and simple cash exchanges.”

According to the sports betting indictment, between 2022 and 2024, co-conspirators who allegedly include Rozier provided private information only known to some in the NBA to others in exchange for flat fees or cuts of the bet profits, once successful.

In one NBA game in March 2023, when Rozier was a player on the Charlotte Hornets, he allegedly told a co-conspirator that he was going to “prematurely remove himself from the game in the first quarter due to a supposed injury.” That co-conspirator sold that information for $100,000 from expected winnings to another defendant, prosecutors said. Shane Hennen, one of the defendants, is accused of placing multiple bets at a sportsbook totalling about $61,200 on Rozier to not eclipse his projected scoring and playing lines in the game. Another co-conspirator allegedly placed bets totalling about $107,000 on the same thing, alongside others who did the same in the gambling ring.

Federal prosecutors said that NBA and team officials were not aware of his injury or plan to leave the game early.

Another game from March of 2023, the betting circle got access to information that an unnamed player was going to sit out a game while playing for the Portland Trail Blazers because the team was tanking, or intentionally losing, to get a better draft pick in the upcoming draft, the indictment says. The group also allegedly acquired access to information that the Orlando Magic were going to sit their best players in an April 2023 game as well. In both cases, prosecutors allege that the gambling circle bet on those teams to lose and win bets because of the information they had.

According to the same indictment, Damon Jones attempted to give inside information to bettors on a prominent NBA player, who appears to be LeBron James, who he played with as a Cleveland Cavalier, and another prominent player. In two games, one in February 2023 and another in January 2024, Jones allegedly sold or attempted to sell non-public information about the players’ injuries to bettors. In the 2023 game, Jones is alleged to have shared information about James’ injury status to bettors before a game against the Milwaukee Bucks, telling a co-conspirator over text that he was going to be out of the game before it was publicly announced. James did not play in that game and the Lakers lost.

Rozier’s attorney James Trusty sent a statement to CBS News saying that Rozier had been characterized 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.” Trusty accused federal prosecutors of wanting “the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk.”

Nocella said the investigation does not involve college basketball, and added that the investigation is still ongoing.

According to the poker game indictment, the rigged games were set up at various locations in New York City and on Long Island, in addition to Las Vegas and Miami. In one poker scheme in New York City, a victim was allegedly defrauded over $1.8 million by the crime ring. Prosecutors allege that from the conception of the poker scheme to the present, victims were defrauded out of more than $7.15 million.

Billups, federal prosecutors said, was allegedly involved in defrauding victims of more than $50,000.

To hide the earnings from the scheme, the co-conspirators laundered their money through shell companies and third-parties, and payments were provided in cash or other forms of payment like cryptocurrency.

According to a detention letter sent to the New York judge who is overseeing the case, the Justice Department is not moving to detain Billups as his case moves forward. But the department did request that 13 defendants be detained.

This is not the first high-profile incident involving alleged illegal betting and the NBA. Earlier this year in a separate case, former NBA player Gilbert Arenas was arrested for allegedly operating an illegal gambling and poker ring out of a California home that he owned.