NEW YORK Flappy, Albanian Bruce and an NBA head coach walked into federal court Monday. As the coach, Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers, pleaded not guilty to charges that he had participated in rigged poker games, the Brooklyn courtroom was packed with people men accused of being mob members, as well as gambling influencers and various hangers-on, some with colorful aliases. Billups, 49, responded tersely to questions from Judge Ramon E. Reyes Jr. as his lawyer, Marc Mukasey, entered his plea to charges of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. Billups then sat for the first status conference with his co-defendants in which minor procedural issues were addressed. The defendants, mostly men, were flanked by their lawyers in the gallery of a courtroom typically reserved for naturalization ceremonies. It was the only one that could accommodate the crowd. The coach’s first appearance in Brooklyn came just over a month after he was charged in a sweeping federal indictment that accused him, along with 30 other people, of rigging poker games with sophisticated technology. The games defrauded victims of at least $7 million, prosecutors said. The case stems from one of three indictments that involve gambling by current and former professional athletes brought by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York in the past month. Other indictments charged Terry Rozier, an NBA player with the Miami Heat, and Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, MLB pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians, with tipping off bettors to information about their performance. Those bettors then placed hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent wagers, through so-called prop bets. Those cases highlight a fundamental tension between professional sports and their connection to gambling in the era of legalized sports betting. But the rigged poker scheme, which prosecutors say was orchestrated by the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese families, had no connection to legal betting. It was outright swindling, according to prosecutors. Celebrities like Billups, along with Damon Jones, another former NBA player, were “face cards,” who lured victims to the games, prosecutors said. They also took a cut of the winnings from the cheating teams, prosecutors said. Several of those charged are in plea negotiations, Michael Gibaldi, a federal prosecutor, said in court Monday.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2025/11/25/chauncey-billups-nba-coach-in-gambling-case-pleads-not-guilty/