Federal prosecutors allege that Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones served as the “face cards” to lure victims into rigged poker games that took place in four different cities in the United States.
Billups, the Basketball Hall of Famer and Trail Blazers head coach, and Jones, a former NBA player and assistant coach, are alleged to have been used to attract victims, who were described as “fish” during a press conference on Thursday announcing the earth-shattering and “historic” indictments related to an FBI sports betting and poker probe.
“What the victims, the ‘fish,’ didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the ‘face cards,’ were in on the scam,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said during the news conference. “Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.”
The poker games took place in the Hamptons, Miami, Las Vegas and Manhattan, with prosecutors alleging the defendants used rigged card shuffling machines that were “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,” Nocella said.
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Nocella explained that the information was then sent to a person at the table, dubbed the “quarterback,” who passed along the information to others at the poker table.
Federal prosecutors allege that the gambling ring also used “poker chip tray analyzers” to secretly read cards using a hidden camera, contact lenses or glasses that were able to read “pre-marked cards” and utilized an “X-ray table,” which was able to read cards that were face down on the poker table.
The FBI has arrested 31 people involved in a rigged poker game ring backed by the New York City organized crime families.
- Ernest Aiello — reputed Bonanno mobster
- Nelson “Spanish G” Alvarez
- Louis “Lou Ap” Apicella
- Ammar “Flapper Poker” Awawdeh
- Saul Becher — professional poker player
- Chauncey Billups — Portland Trail Blazers coach, NBA Hall of Famer and 2004 NBA champion
- Matthew “The Wrestler” Daddino
- Eric “Spooky” Earnest
- Lee Fama — professional poker player
- John Gallo
- Marco Garzon
- Thomas “Tommy Juice” Gelardo — reputed Lucchese mobster charged in 2013 for beating porn star girlfriend
- Jamie Gilet
- Tony “Black Tony” Goodson
- Kenny Han
- Shane “Sugar” Henne
- Osman “Albanian Bruce” Hoti
- Horatio Hu
- Zhen “Scruli” Hu
- Damon “Dee Jones” Jones — NBA player from 1998 to 2009
- Joseph Lanni
- John “John South” Mazzola
- Curtis Meeks
- Nicholas Minucci
- Michael Renzulli
- Anthony Ruggiero Jr.
- Anthony “Doc” Shnayderman
- Robert “Black Rob” Stroud
- Seth Trustman
- Sophia “Pookie” Wei
- Julius Ziliani
It’s alleged that Billups was one of five defendants who organized and took part in the rigged poker games in Las Vegas.
“Victims were attracted to play alongside well-known professional athletes and coaches, like Chauncey Billups only to be unknowingly deceived through rigged shuffling machines fixing the odds in their favor,” assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office Christopher G. Raia said.
“This alleged scheme wreaked havoc across the nation, exploiting the notoriety of some and the wallets of many to fund the Italian crime families here in New York.”
The shocking arrests and indictments related to the alleged poker and gambling schemes have rocked the NBA world, including Billups and current NBA player Terry Rozier, who is claimed to have taken himself out of a 2023 game to help someone win a bet. Both were placed on leave by the league on Thursday.
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