Former Nuggets, Buffs star Chauncey Billups arrested for alleged illegal gambling

Former Nuggets and CU star Chauncey Billups was arrested on Thursday in connection with an alleged illegal poker operation that had ties to the Mafia

BY TRENT FINNEGAN

Oct 23, 2025, 8:17 AM Updated: 10:18 am

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Chauncey Billups, the current head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers and a former star guard for both the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Buffaloes, was arrested on Thursday morning in connection with an illegal poker operation that was tied to the Mafia.

According to a report from ABC News, Billups was arrested in Oregon, and is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups has been charged in an illegal poker operation tied to the Mafia, law enforcement sources have told @ABC News.

Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was arrested in a separate but related betting case.

More: https://t.co/BpAbVBgVDI pic.twitter.com/ksAWmMdOv1

— ABC News (@ABC) October 23, 2025

Miami head guard Terry Rozier and former Cleveland guard Damon Jones were also arrested on Thursday in what ABC tagged as a “separate but related illegal gambling case.”

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS WAS ALLEGEDLY IN A RIGGED POKER SCHEME TIED TO THE MAFIA

“The second indictment involves 31 defendants alleged to have participated in a nationwide scheme to rig illegal poker games. These defendants, which include former professional athletes, used high tech cheating technology to steal millions of dollars from victims in underground poker games that were secretly fixed. The games in the New York area were backed by the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families of La Cosa Nostra,” EDNY U.S. ATTORNEY Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a press conference Thursday.

Nocella said that the defendants tied to the rigged poker scheme have been charged with wire fraud conspiracy. This investigation has been going on for multiple years.

“Beginning as early as 2019, the defendants in this case orchestrated a scheme to use wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games across the United States, including in the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Miami and Manhattan,” Nocella said. “The scheme targeted victims known as ‘fish,’ who were often lured to participate in these rigged games by the chance to play alongside former professional athletes who were known as ‘face cards.’

“The so called face cards included the defendant Chauncey Billups, who at the time of the scheme, was a former NBA player and is currently the head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers… The defendants used a variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies, some of which were provided by other defendants in exchange for a share of the profits from the scheme. For example, they used off-the-shelf shuffling machines that had been secretly altered in order to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information to an off site operator.

“The off site operator sent the information via cell phone, back to a co-conspirator at the table, and that person at the table was known as the quarterback. The quarterback then signaled secretly the information he had received from others that to others at the table, and together, they used that information in order to win their games and to cheat the victims,” Nocella said.

Billups has now been placed on immediate leave by the NBA as of 10:15 a.m. MDT on Thursday, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania.

NBA statement on Billups and Rozier being placed on leave from their respective teams: https://t.co/Bm1rC3Jwq1 pic.twitter.com/aoXqj4IEAL

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) October 23, 2025

BILLUPS IS ONE OF THE BEST BASKETBALL PLAYERS IN COLORADO’S HISTORY

Billups was on the sidelines for the Blazers on Wednesday night for the season opener, a game his squad dropped against the Minnesota Timberwolves 118-114. His postgame press conference seemed as normal as can be, as the fifth-year head coach spoke about how optimistic he was for the upcoming season, but he did say “let the chips fall” in the process. Twelve hours later, that’s not a good look.

The 49-year-old coach has a plethora of ties to the city of Denver. He was born here in 1976, he went to George Washington High School as a kid, he then played his college ball up in Boulder for the Colorado Buffaloes, and he spent five years across two separate stints with the Denver Nuggets as a player. He was a key piece of the 2009 Nuggets team that made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals, one of the best teams in franchise history.

At Colorado, he was First-Team All-Big 12 in 1997 and was a consensus Second-Team All-American in 1997. His No. 4 is retired by the program. He was also named as Mr. Colorado Basketball three years in a row in high school (1993-1995). In 2024, he was elected into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

According to FBI Director Kash Patel, this is a “historic arrest across a wide, sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.”