Updated October 23, 2025 at 11:58 AM MDT
Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones were arrested Thursday over their alleged participation in two major illegal gambling schemes — one involving bets placed on NBA games, the other involving underground poker games — investigated by the FBI.
Federal prosecutors say the two schemes were organized in part by New York crime families and involved hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal, fraudulent wagers. More than 30 people were arrested in eleven states on Thursday, and more are expected to surrender themselves later, Justice Department officials said.
"This is an illegal gambling operation and sports-rigging operation that spanned the course of years," said FBI director Kash Patel at a Thursday press conference. "The fraud is mind-boggling. It's not hundreds of dollars. It's not thousands of dollars. It's not even millions of dollars. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation."
One indictment — United States vs. Earnest, et al. — involved a scheme to place bets on NBA games based on non-public information, such as when a player planned to pull himself out of a game due to injury or illness.
Working with organized crime groups, NBA "insiders" such as Rozier and Jones would pass along confidential information in exchange for some of the proceeds, said Joseph Nocella, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "They relied on corrupt individuals, including Jones and Rozier. They also used misused information obtained during long-standing friendships they had with NBA players and coaches," he said.
The indictment highlights seven games in 2023 and 2024 on which hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of illegal bets were allegedly placed. Insider tips came to gamblers from connections on five teams, including two then-active players: Rozier, who at the time played for the Charlotte Hornets, and Jontay Porter, then a player with the Toronto Raptors who was banned for life from the NBA last year due to his involvement in gambling.
Other tips came from Jones, the former Cavaliers player and coach who was serving as an "unofficial" assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers during the spring of 2023, the indictment says. Jones allegedly sold or attempted to sell non-public information about player injuries to gamblers. Other insiders, including a Trail Blazers coach and an Orlando Magic player, allegedly provided information to gamblers but were not named in the indictment.
The second indictment, called United States vs. Aiello, involved a series of rigged poker games arranged by organized crime groups in New York. Victims were induced to participate in the games with the promise of playing against prominent former athletes, including Billups and Jones, Nocella said.
Then, using a variety of cheating technology — including rigged shuffling machines and an x-ray poker table designed to reveal the victims' hidden cards — the crime groups would cheat the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game, the indictment alleges.
Victims lost at least $7 million in the rigged games, officials say. Other defendants include the games' organizers, suppliers of the cheating equipment and others who allegedly played in the rigged games — including Billups, who participated in a series of games in 2019 in Las Vegas, according to the indictment.
Billups and Rozier each face one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Jones, who allegedly participated in both schemes, faces two counts of each charge.
Billups, 49, played in the NBA for 17 years, winning a title with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. He was named coach of the Portland Trail Blazers in 2021 and was elected into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. Jones, also 49, played for ten different teams over the course of his NBA career from 1998 through 2009, including three seasons with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Billups and Rozier, 31, are expected to appear in federal court later Thursday, Billups in Portland and Rozier in Orlando. They will be arraigned in New York at a future date, said DOJ spokesperson John Marzulli.
James Trusty, a lawyer representing Rozier, told NPR in a statement that the player's arrest on Thursday had come as a surprise, as prosecutors had previously communicated to them that Rozier was "a subject, not a target" of their investigation.
"It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self surrender they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case," Trusty said. "Terry was cleared by the NBA and these prosecutors revived that non-case. Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight."
In 2023, when Rozier played for the Charlotte Hornets, the NBA was alerted to "unusual betting activity" related to his performance in a March game against the New Orleans Pelicans, the NBA said in a statement earlier this year.
Rozier logged five points, four rebounds and two assists in the first quarter of that game before exiting with what the team described as "foot discomfort." All those totals were well below his season averages, and all of them were under the betting lines set by sportsbooks for proposition wagers. Rozier did not play again that season. He was later traded to the Miami Heat.
At the time, the NBA conducted an investigation and did not find any wrongdoing, the league said this year.
Meanwhile, the federal investigation had proceeded separately. In the unsealed indictment, Rozier is accused of telling a friend, Deniro Laster, ahead of time that he planned to exit the game early so that Laster could place a bet on the game. Laster then sold that information to other gamblers for $100,000, the indictment alleges, leading to more than a quarter-million dollars worth of bets being placed on the "under" in proposition bets involving Rozier's performance.
Federal officials said Thursday that the NBA had cooperated with the investigation. In a statement, the NBA said the league "will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities" and that Billups and Rozier had been placed on leave. "We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains a top priority," the statement said.
Neither the Trail Blazers nor the Heat has responded to NPR's requests for comment. It was not immediately clear who was representing Billups or Jones in the cases.
Prosecutors said another former NBA player, Jontay Porter, had been involved in the organized gambling operation. Porter was banned for life by the NBA in 2024 after an investigation revealed he had manipulated his performances for the Toronto Raptors in two games that year.
Later that year, he pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the scheme. Porter is set to be sentenced in December.
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