Trail Blazers Coach Charged in Mob-Linked Poker Scheme

Portland Trail Blazers head coach and 2024 Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Chauncey Billups pleaded not guilty Monday to federal charges that he profited from a mob-backed, rigged poker operation—one of several high-profile cases testing the intersection of U.S. sports, organized crime, and the booming online gambling economy.

Billups, suspended by the Trail Blazers following his arrest in Oregon last month, appeared alongside 30 co-defendants in an extraordinary status conference before U.S. District Judge Ramon Reyes. The defendants include alleged members of multiple New York organized crime families, former NBA guard Damon Jones, and professional boxer Curtis Meeks.

The hearing, held not in a standard courtroom but in a spacious ceremonial chamber typically reserved for naturalization ceremonies, underscored both the scale and sensitivity of the investigation.

Rigged Poker, Laundering, and a “Complex Case”

Billups faces felony counts of money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy—charges that carry potential sentences of up to 20 years each. Speaking only briefly, he answered procedural questions with one-word replies. His attorney, Marc Mukasey, declined comment.

Federal prosecutors allege that Billups financially benefitted from manipulated high-stakes poker games tied to organized crime figures, including Angelo Ruggiero Jr. and Thomas Gelardo, both held without bail. Judge Reyes characterized the matter as a “complex case” involving overlapping schemes of cheating, extortion, and robbery.

The government sought to divide the 31 defendants into three smaller groups to accelerate proceedings—a request Reyes denied, signaling that the multi-defendant case will likely drag into 2026. The next status conference is scheduled for March 4 of that year. Prosecutors noted that “several defendants” have begun plea negotiations, though no agreements have been announced.

Billups is not the only athlete facing criminal exposure. Boxer Curtis Meeks, accused of supplying poker cheating technology, unsuccessfully asked the court to relax his bail conditions. Former NBA guard Damon Jones is also charged in the case.

Prosecutors have suggested that Billups aligns with an unnamed co-conspirator in U.S. vs. Earnest, a related sports betting case unfolding in the same district—highlighting how authorities believe the illegal poker network overlaps with broader illicit gambling schemes. Billups’ earlier attorney, Chris Heywood, has called the former NBA All-Star a “man of integrity” and rejected all allegations.

The Broader iGaming Reckoning

The Billups case is one node in a rapidly expanding web of federal investigations scrutinizing the integrity of sports wagering—a sector that has surged to tens of billions in annual legal bets since the 2018 Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to authorize sports gambling.

This rapid expansion—combined with increasingly sophisticated technology for both legal and illegal wagering—has created fertile ground for criminal exploitation, from insider information to player manipulation to game-integrity breaches.

Regulators and law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned that the proliferation of unregulated or offshore platforms, coupled with financial vulnerabilities among young athletes, has heightened the risks of coercion and corruption. While the Billups case centers on illegal poker, another iGaming scandal continues to unfold around former Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter, who last year pleaded guilty to wire fraud for manipulating his own performance to benefit gamblers.

On Tuesday, prosecutors filed a pre-sentencing letter recommending a 41- to 51-month prison term for Timothy McCormack, one of five men charged with exploiting Porter by placing “under” prop bets on games that Porter exited early. The scheme produced roughly $70,000 in profit from two contests during the 2023–24 NBA season.

Federal officials have suggested Porter may have acted under duress. Interim U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella stated that the player—identified in earlier filings as “Player 1”—may have been pressured to erase gambling debts by intentionally underperforming.

If substantiated, that accusation would represent one of the clearest examples to date of an athlete being leveraged in real time by illicit gambling interests.

This is a complex case involving overlapping schemes of cheating, extortion, and illegal gambling,” Judge Ramon Reyes said during the hearing.

A Growing Integrity Crisis

The convergence of the Billups and Porter cases paints a picture of a sports environment increasingly entangled with illegal gambling networks. Despite leagues’ efforts to expand integrity monitoring and their lucrative partnerships with betting operators, the rapid normalization of wagering has raised concerns that athletes and staff—particularly those outside the highest income tiers—may be vulnerable to exploitation.

From college athletes targeted in online harassment campaigns by bettors, to professional players investigated for irregular betting activity, to criminal conspiracies spanning multiple sports, regulators warn that the U.S. sports ecosystem is in the early stages of confronting a new generation of threats.

For now, Billups and his co-defendants will not return to court for several months. But the legal and cultural reckoning over gambling’s accelerating influence on American sports is only just beginning.