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The FBI arrested Heat guard Terry Rozier, Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, and former NBA player Damon Jones on Thursday morning as part of a federal probe into illegal gambling.
Rozier and Jones were accused of being part of an NBA gambling scheme that relied on them providing inside information on the league. FBI director Kash Patel called it “the insider trading saga for the NBA” at a Thursday morning law enforcement press conference in Brooklyn.
“Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups are being placed on immediate leave from their teams, and we will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities,” the NBA said in a statement Thursday morning. “We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.” Portland assistant Tiago Splitter will coach the team in Billups’s absence, ESPN reported.
Rozier and other defendants in the NBA scheme were charged with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch said Thursday morning.
Billups was charged in a separate indictment alleging his role in a rigged poker game run by organized crime. The illegal poker scheme lured players to games using celebrities like Billups, prosecutors said, and then used “advanced wireless technologies” including “rigged shuffling machines” to guarantee profits to New York’s “Italian crime families.”
Patel said Thursday morning that two separate cases involved “tens of millions of dollars” of theft and fraud. At least 31 people were in custody Thursday, a spokesperson for the Eastern District of New York said.
U.S. assistant attorney Joseph Nocella called the scheme for which Rozier and Jones were arrested “one of the most brazen sports corruption schemes since online sports betting became widely legalized in the United States.” Jones was charged in both separate indictments, prosecutors said.
The investigation also involves former Raptors forward Jontay Porter, whom the NBA banned for life in April 2024 after he “disclosed confidential information about his own health status” to a bettor. Porter is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
NBA veteran guard Malik Beasley, who played for the Pistons last year, is also considered a “subject” in the federal investigation. The operators of the Rozier-Jones ring are accused of threatening Porter.
Rozier has been linked to the gambling probe since January, when The Wall Street Journal reported he was under investigation for alleged point-shaving.
Rozier was still eligible to play for the Heat despite the federal investigation. He is in the final year of a four-year, $96 million contract he signed with the Hornets in 2021 and was set to make $26.6 million this season. Nicknamed “Scary Terry” for his playoff performances, Rozier is entering his 11th NBA season and is a valuable rotation player. He has averaged 13.9 points per game on 42% shooting in his career overall and has made more than $160 million in salary.
Billups began his fifth season as the Blazers coach Wednesday night and agreed to a multiyear extension with Portland this spring. Rozier sat out the Heat’s season opener Wednesday. Jones played in the NBA between 1999 and 2009 and spent three seasons as a Cavaliers assistant coach from 2016 to 2018.
In March 2023, the NBA was alerted to unusual betting on Rozier’s performance in two games that season, when he was playing for the Hornets. Tisch referred to the March 2023 game Thursday morning, saying Rozier deliberately removed himself from a game to make sure bettors could profit from the under on his prop bets for that game.
“The integrity of the game is paramount to NBA players, but so is the presumption of innocence, and both are hindered when player popularity is misused to gain attention,” the NBA’s players’ union said in a statement to FOS. “We will ensure our members are protected and afforded their due process rights through this process.”
The NBA conducted its own investigation and cleared Rozier of any wrongdoing, but his attorney, Jim Trusty, told Front Office Sports in an email in July that he had yet to be cleared by the federal government.
“Federal investigations can take years to complete, and the government rarely lets the subject of an investigation know whether or not they have been cleared of allegations of wrongdoing,” Trusty wrote to FOS at the time.
—Colin Salao contributed reporting.
