Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups have been arrested on charges connected to an FBI investigation into illegal gambling.
FBI director Kash Patel announced a “historic arrest” on Thursday at a press conference where he spoke about “a wide, sweeping criminal enterprise that envelops both the NBA and La Casa Nostra.”
“This is an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spans the course of years,” Patel said. “Not only did we crack into the fraud that these perpetrators committed on the grand stage of the NBA, but we also entered and executed a system of justice against La Cosa Nostra, to include the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, and Luchese crime families. The charges and the arrests that were taken down across this country range from wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery, illegal gambling – this FBI will leave no room for any perpetrator of crime across this country.”
Former NBA player Damon Jones was also arrested as part of the probe.
Rozier had been under investigation by the NBA since at least January 2025 when — in the aftermath of the gambling scandal involving Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter — it was reported that a similar incident might have occurred involving Rozier during a March 2023 game; in that game, a high volume of “Under” bets were placed on Rozier’s performance, with Rozier only playing nine minutes due to a foot injury.
Rozier’s March 2023 game was referenced by authorities during Thursday’s press conference. “Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his ‘under’ statistics. Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes, and those bets paid out, generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit. The proceeds were later delivered to his home, where the group counted their cash. As the NBA season tips off, his career is already benched, not for injury, but for integrity,” New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
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While the NBA’s own investigation continued, Rozier was permitted to continue playing basketball, as no charges or arrests had been made. Rozier did not play in the Heat’s season-opening game on Wednesday night versus the Orlando Magic.
Rozier’s lawyer, Jim Trusty, said in a statement to CNN, “We have represented Terry Rozier for over a year. A long time ago, we reached out to these prosecutors to tell them we should have an open line of communication. They characterized Terry as a subject, not a target, but at 6 a.m. this morning, they called to tell me FBI agents were trying to arrest him in a hotel.”
The statement continued, “It is unfortunate that instead of allowing him to self-surrender, they opted for a photo op. They wanted the misplaced glory of embarrassing a professional athlete with a perp walk. That tells you a lot about the motivations in this case. They appear to be taking the word of spectacularly incredible sources rather than relying on actual evidence of wrongdoing.”
Trusty added, “Terry was cleared by the NBA, and these prosecutors revived that non-case. Terry is not a gambler, but he is not afraid of a fight, and he looks forward to winning this fight.”
Billups was arrested for his alleged participation in an illegal high-stakes poker game with organized crime ties; a similar investigation previously saw the arrest of former Washington Wizards All-Star guard Gilbert Arenas, who in July was federally charged with running an illegal underground high-stakes gambling operation.
Billups was accused by the FBI of being a “face card” — a celebrity used to attract and distract high-value players — for illegal and rigged poker games. “What the victims — the fish — didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam,” US Attorney Joe Nocella said during the press conference.
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“Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game. The defendants used a variety of very sophisticated cheating technologies, some of which were provided by other defendants in exchange for a share of the profits from the scheme.”
A five-time All-Star and recent inductee into the National Basketball Hall of Fame, Billups coached the Trail Blazers’ season-opening game Wednesday in Portland in the hours prior to his arrest.
Following the FBI’s press conference, the NBA issued a statement saying that both Rozier and Billups are “on immediate leave from their teams” following the federal indictments. “We take these allegations with the utmost seriousness, and the integrity of our game remains our top priority.”
In July 2024, former NBA player Jontay Porter, who was banned from the league for life after he gambled on games he participated in as a member of the Toronto Raptors, pleaded guilty to a charge of wire fraud conspiracy in connection with the scandal.
The NBA accused Porter of violating the league’s rules against gambling, claiming he’d given info to sports bettors and taken himself out of games to help his co-conspirators secure “unders” on prop bets based on his performance.
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In a March 2024 game between the Raptors and the Sacramento Kings, Porter played only three minutes of a game before “claiming that he felt ill,” the statement said. Porter also bet on NBA games himself, according to the league’s statement, including betting on his own team, the Raptors, to lose. “Three of the bets were multi-game parlay bets that included one Raptors game, in which Porter bet that the Raptors would lose. All three bets lost,” the league found.
Porter faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced in December 2025.
