Top Stories of 2025, #2: Poker Game Arrests Involving Basketball Stars Rock the NBA

Poker hit mainstream media in 2025, however for all of the incorrect causes, most notably a serious dishonest scandal that concerned some NBA stars allegedly rigging poker video games.

Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Path Blazers, was the very best profile former athlete implicated in a federal indictment that noticed 31 folks arrested on unlawful playing associated prices.

Billups, as soon as a star guard and NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, was pressured to step other than his teaching place and has since entered a not responsible plea. However his fame, and others, has been shattered because of a narrative in 2025 that had all the largest sports activities media shops speaking.

Rigged Poker Sport Allegations

Based on U.S. lawyer Joseph Nocella, victims had been lured to take part in rigged poker video games with the possibility to play alongside former skilled athletes. These lured had been referred to as “fish” with the big-name athletes named “face playing cards.”

Poker professional Matt Berkey, on the Solely Mates podcast, uncovered the suspect video games in 2023. He had been recruited to play within the video games, however declined as he felt they weren’t on the up and up. It seems he might have be on to one thing.

Prosecutors allege that big-name athletes, together with Billups, had been used to lure victims to the video games, which passed off throughout the U.S. within the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Miami and Manhattan. One sufferer was allegedly cheated out of $1.8 million in only a few periods in New York Metropolis in 2023.

The video games had been supposedly cheated utilizing quite a lot of high-tech strategies, together with rigged shuffling machines, poker chip tray analyzers and x-ray tables. Prosecutors say this expertise was supplied by Tony Goodson of Georgia, Curtis “Curt” Meeks of Texas, Shane “Sugar” Hennen of Pennsylvania, and Robert “Black Rob” Stroud of Kentucky.

Billups posted a $5 million bond upon pleading not responsible. He nonetheless has not been formally fired as head coach of the Path Blazers, however has not been with the workforce since his arrest. Tiago Splitter has been serving as head coach in an interim function.

Arenas Dealing with Poker-Associated Fees Too

There was a separate however related NBA scandal involving poker that broke over the summer season. This one concerned former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas, who was allegedly concerned in unlawful personal poker video games at a house he owned within the Los Angeles space.

“Agent Zero,” authorities declare, allegedly “rented out an Encino mansion he owned for the aim of internet hosting high-stakes unlawful poker video games” from September 2021 to July 2022.

Additionally charged within the indictment are alleged co-conspirators Evgenni Tourevski, Allan Austria, Yarin Cohen, Ievgen Krachun and Yevgeni Gershman, a suspected organized crime determine from Israel.

Arenas has publicly denied any wrongdoing and claims he had nothing to do with the video games that passed off inside his dwelling or the individuals who had been operating the video games.