Top Stories of 2025, #2: Poker Game Arrests Involving Basketball Stars Rock the NBA
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Poker hit mainstream media in 2025, but for all the wrong reasons, most notably a major cheating scandal that involved some NBA stars allegedly rigging poker games.
Chauncey Billups, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, was the highest profile former athlete implicated in a federal indictment that saw 31 people arrested on illegal gambling related charges.
Billups, once a star guard and NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons, was forced to step aside from his coaching position and has since entered a not guilty plea. But his reputation, and others, has been shattered thanks to a story in 2025 that had all the biggest sports media outlets talking.
Rigged Poker Game Allegations
According to U.S. attorney Joseph Nocella, victims were lured to participate in rigged poker games with the chance to play alongside former professional athletes. Those lured were called "fish" with the big-name athletes named "face cards."
Poker pro Matt Berkey, on the Only Friends podcast, exposed the suspect games in 2023. He had been recruited to play in the games, but declined as he felt they weren't on the up and up. It turns out he may have be on to something.
Prosecutors allege that big-name athletes, including Billups, were used to lure victims to the games, which took place across the U.S. in the Hamptons, Las Vegas, Miami and Manhattan. One victim was allegedly cheated out of $1.8 million in just a few sessions in New York City in 2023.
The games were supposedly cheated using a variety of high-tech methods, including rigged shuffling machines, poker chip tray analyzers and x-ray tables. Prosecutors say this technology was provided by Tony Goodson of Georgia, Curtis "Curt" Meeks of Texas, Shane "Sugar" Hennen of Pennsylvania, and Robert "Black Rob" Stroud of Kentucky.
Billups posted a $5 million bond upon pleading not guilty. He still has not been officially fired as head coach of the Trail Blazers, but has not been with the team since his arrest. Tiago Splitter has been serving as head coach in an interim role.
Arenas Facing Poker-Related Charges Too
There was a separate but similar NBA scandal involving poker that broke over the summer. This one involved former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas, who was allegedly involved in illegal private poker games at a home he owned in the Los Angeles area.
"Agent Zero," authorities claim, allegedly "rented out an Encino mansion he owned for the purpose of hosting high-stakes illegal poker games" from September 2021 to July 2022.
Also charged in the indictment are alleged co-conspirators Evgenni Tourevski, Allan Austria, Yarin Cohen, Ievgen Krachun and Yevgeni Gershman, a suspected organized crime figure from Israel.
Arenas has publicly denied any wrongdoing and claims he had nothing to do with the games that took place inside his home or the people who were running the games.
