Former NBA players stand accused of participating in a mob-connected ring of rigged poker games that defrauded players out of millions of dollars.
Among 31 people named in the indictment are NBA coach Chauncey Billups and former player Damon Jones, who are alleged to have participated in the scheme as 'face cards' — famous players designed to lure unsuspecting wealthy gamblers ('fish') to the game. Both were arrested on Thursday.
"What the victims, the fish, didn't know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealers to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam," US Attorney Joseph Norcella, Jr. said.
Jones was also indicted in a separate case involving the use of confidential information to place fraudulent sports bets. He played on 10 different teams in his 11-year career. Billups, who was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2024, won an NBA championship with Detroit and is the current coach of the Portland Trail Blazers.
The scam involved rigged shufflers, hidden cameras, marked cards, and an x-ray table capable of revealing face-down cards. It was a sophisticated scheme that lured players with the opportunity to play with sports stars.
Rigged poker games go back to 2019
The FBI investigation into the rigged poker activity, or 'Operation Royal Flush', has been underway for around four years across 11 states, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. The alleged scheme dates back to at least 2019.
According to the indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York, 31 people are accused of rigging poker games throughout the United States beginning in 2019. The games were held at otherwise non-rigged private, but illegal, poker games in Manhattan, Miami, the Hamptons, and Las Vegas. The New York games operated under organized crime families, who provided protection and collected debts.
The large ring of co-defendants were working together to cheat the games using wireless technology, the indictment says. They would use a rigged shuffler to read each hand and relay that information to an off-site operator, who would text a co-conspirator at the table. That player would share information with others the team who were seated at the table and they would work together to defraud unknowing marks out of millions.
Other methods of cheating used by the ring include poker chip trays and decoy cell phones that could read cards on the table, along with marked cards and special glasses or contact lenses.
Speaking earlier today, FBI Director Patel described it as “a wide-reaching criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra.”
Patel said the scale of the fraud was "mind-boggling" and confirmed the case was ongoing.
"It's not hundreds of dollars," he said. "Its not thousands of dollars, it's not tens of 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."
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