Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested Thursday morning as part of an ongoing federal investigation into two separate gambling schemes. In a press conference afterward, officials from multiple enforcement agencies detailed those alleged schemes. One involved prop bets and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent profits, and another involved illegal rigged poker games and millions of dollars of fraudulent profits. The two alleged schemes vary in scope and appear to have bundled together because of the pro basketball angle, and because they involved three overlapping defendants, including former NBA journeyman Damon Jones. The NBA announced in a statement that both Rozier and Billups have been placed on immediate leave.
The alleged scheme involving Rozier had to do with the manipulation of prop bets. The gamblers supposedly used non-public information about NBA players, and a network of straw bettors operating on online sportsbooks and in-person casinos, to bet hundreds of thousands of dollars. They bet the under on the players who intended to play worse, or remove themselves early from games. The example cited by New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch was a game on March 23, 2023, when Rozier left the game after nine minutes of play. Later that evening, Tisch said, his co-conspirators assembled at Rozier’s house to count tens of thousands of dollars in winnings. (The NBA had previously investigated Rozier for betting patterns around that game, but cleared the player of any wrongdoing.)
