Chauncey Billups Continues Push for Speedy Poker Trial

Chauncey Billups remains determined to go to trial as soon as possible. 

On Thursday, federal attorneys in the rigged poker case sent a letter to Judge Ramon Reyes seeking to delay the trial in Billups’s case from Nov. 2 to early 2027. Government prosecutors said seven defendants consented to the government’s request while Billups’s attorney and four others did not.

In a status conference in June, prosecutors asked Reyes to delay the case until 2027 because multiple attorneys will be on trial for other cases while another will be on maternity leave. Reyes was not moved, telling the attorneys present to begin educating others in their department to take over if necessary.

At the same hearing, Billups’s attorney, Marc Mukasey, said he and his client “love” the idea of going to trial in November and stated it as their preference over a delay into 2027.

Billups, the Hall of Fame point guard and Trail Blazers coach, was arrested in October along with NBA guard Terry Rozier and former player/assistant coach Damon Jones as part of a widespread gambling probe that has also involved former Raptors forward Jontay Porter and veteran guard Malik Beasley. Porter and Jones have already pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Billups is accused of being involved in rigged poker games run by organized crime. The October indictment alleges Billups’s celebrity status was used to lure players to the games, which had “advanced wireless technologies,” including “rigged shuffling machines,” to guarantee profits to New York’s Italian crime families.

In their letter to Reyes, government attorneys write that the parties “have made significant progress in narrowing this case” since their last hearing. Seven defendants in the case have already pleaded guilty, with plea hearings set for 12 additional defendants, three of whom will happen by month’s end.

If the 12 additional defendants all plead guilty, Billups will be one of five defendants who will go to trial in the case. To beat the charges, he would have to prove that he didn’t know the poker games were rigged or was unaware of the alleged operation while playing in the games.

Billups has been charged with counts of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. While he isn’t indicted in the game-fixing arm of the probe, he matches a description of “Co-Conspirator 8,” an NBA coach since 2021 who played in the league from 1997 to 2014 and resided in Oregon. The indictment says Co-Conspirator 8 told Eric Earnest, who is a defendant in both cases, in March 2023 that the Blazers would be tanking and benching their best players in a game that night, leading defendants to place successful bets on Portland to lose.

Mukasey is a former prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and previously represented President Donald Trump in 2019 to stop Manhattan’s district attorney from getting his tax returns and also had FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Aspiration co-founder Joseph Sanberg as clients in recent years. 

Mukasey has declined to comment to the media since taking over from Chris Heywood as Billups’s representation, preferring to keep his comments strictly in court. 

“Anyone who knows Chauncey Billups knows he is a man of integrity; men of integrity do not cheat and defraud others,” Heywood said in a statement the day Billups was arrested.

“To believe that Chauncey Billups did what the federal government is accusing him of is to believe that he would risk his hall-of-fame legacy, his reputation, and his freedom. He would not jeopardize those things for anything, let alone a card game. Furthermore, Chauncey Billups has never and would never gamble on basketball games, provide insider information, or sacrifice the trust of his team and the League, as it would tarnish the game he has devoted his entire life to.”