NBA Star Enters Plea, Slapped with $5M Bond in Rigged Poker Games Case

NBA coach and former star Chauncey Billups pleaded not responsible on Monday to a number of fees stemming from his alleged involvement in a high-stakes poker dishonest ring.

Billups is the highest-profile determine of the greater than two dozen people indicted final month within the bombshell case. The Portland Path Blazers coach and former Detroit Pistons level guard, who prosecutors say was a “face card” in mafia-tied poker video games that cheated victims out of hundreds of thousands, appeared in federal court docket in New York Metropolis on fees of wire fraud conspiracy and cash laundering conspiracy.

In a while Monday, U.S. District Decide Ramon E. Reyes launched Billups on a $5 million bond. In response to NBC Information, Billups used his Colorado house as collateral for the bond, which incorporates a number of circumstances, together with that he can not gamble or affiliate with any members of organized crime.

Plea Offers Coming?

The indictment has rocked each the sports activities and playing worlds as greater than two dozen defendants are accused of participating in a high-stakes, high-tech poker dishonest ring tied to the Bonanno, Gambino, and Genovese crime households.

Prosecutors allege that big-name athletes, together with Billups, have 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 just some classes in New York Metropolis in 2023.

The video games have 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 know-how 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’ 30 co-defendants are additionally scheduled to look in court docket on Monday, together with fellow former basketball professional Damon Jones and alleged recreation runners Ammar Awawdeh, Saul Becher, John Gallo, Zhen Hu, and Seth Trustman.

Yahoo Sports activities reported {that a} current court docket submitting revealed that “a number of defendants” are within the early stage of discussing plea offers.

Billups, 49, was placed on depart from his head teaching gig with the Path Blazers after being indicted. He was changed by Tiago Splitter, who’s at the moment serving in an interim position.

*Lead picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Connor Richards is a Senior Editor U.S. for PokerNews and host of the Life Outdoors Poker podcast. Connor has been nominated for 3 International Poker Awards for his writing.