NBA coach Chauncey Billups, player Terry Rozier arrested in FBI gambling probe

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.

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.

Billups and Rozier are expected to appear in federal court today, 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.

Portland Trail Blazers Head coach Chauncey Billups was among those arrested in a wide-ranging FBI probe into illegal sports betting and gambling in the NBA.

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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, a federal investigation had proceeded separately. That investigation had hung over Rozier during the 2025 offseason.

Federal officials said Thursday that the NBA had cooperated with the investigation. The league did not immediately return NPR's request for comment, nor did the Trail Blazers or the Heat. 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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