The federal government has secured a major guilty plea in its case regarding an allegedly rigged poker game run by organized crime that ensnared dozens of defendants, including Hall of Fame point guard Chauncey Billups, who has maintained his innocence.
Shane Hennen, a central figure in both cases that erupted last October, will plead guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy in the poker case, according to a letter filed by the government Tuesday. The letter notes that 11 other defendants in the case are also “expected” to plead guilty. In total, 19 of the 31 total defendants in the poker case have now either pleaded guilty or agreed to do so. He is also a defendant in the parallel case that alleges gamblers were profiting by betting on NBA games using inside information. Those two cases are playing out in New York.
Hennen is also a key figure in a separate gambling scandal that exploded in January, where federal prosecutors in Philadelphia accused 26 individuals of being involved in a plot to fix NCAA Division I men’s basketball and Chinese Basketball Association games between September 2022 and February 2025. Hennen pleaded not guilty in that case back in February. His attorney in that case did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
In the poker case, prosecutors allege that the defendants, including Hennen, ran an illegal poker scheme during which they lured players to games using celebrities like Billups. The government claims the defendants then used “advanced wireless technologies” including “rigged shuffling machines” to guarantee profits to New York’s “Italian crime families.”
Veteran NBA guard Terry Rozier is a defendant in the other New York case, in which Hennen has not pleaded guilty. There, Rozier and former NBA player and coach Damon Jones are accused of providing inside information to gamblers who then profited by betting. Jones was named in both the poker and inside info cases; in April, he agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud in each. Rozier, meanwhile, says he is innocent and has been trying to continue his basketball career while awaiting trial, but a recent ruling set him back on that front.
The same federal probe that resulted in the arrests of Rozier and Jones also recently ensnared two other former NBA players, Malik Beasley and Ed Davis. Those two, among others, were charged last month in a separate case that does not name Hennen. Beasley pleaded not guilty on July 1, and on Tuesday, Davis did the same.
“There Are Two Worlds Here”
Although Hennen has only agreed to plead guilty in the poker case, his decision to do so likely means the charges against him in the betting case will be dropped, according to Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney at Kudman Trachten Aloe Posner LLP.
Standard operating procedure is that if someone is guilty pursuant to a plea agreement, the agreement will include a paragraph that says other charges will be dismissed after he gets sentenced on the offense covered by the plea, Epner tells Front Office Sports.
“You wouldn’t make a deal to sell half of a house,” he says. “Normally, these things are meant to wrap everything up in one plea agreement.” As a “matter of logistics,” however, the government typically starts with a filing like the one made Tuesday, indicating the defendant will plead guilty in one of the cases.
The Hennen news does not definitively mean he is now going to become a cooperating witness, Epner says, but “there is credit you get for just pleading guilty” because it means the government does not have to put in the time and effort to prove its case.
Meanwhile, his guilty plea is not necessarily dire for Billups. “There are two worlds here,” Epner tells FOS.
World one is that Billups knew he was roping people into a rigged game, and now he has to worry that the people running the game are pleading guilty. In that world, Billups would currently be worried that one or more defendants has agreed to cooperate with the government, which means they may provide evidence against him, either through testimony, documents, or something else.
“That would be a huge problem,” Epner says of Billups’s outlook in that scenario.
World two is that Billups was roping people into a high-stakes poker game, but he did not know it was rigged.
“If that’s the case, it does not make me more or less nervous if I’m Chauncey Billups,” Epner says.
Hennen’s attorney in the poker and betting cases did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the attorney for Billups.
