Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups is one of 31 defendants accused of helping mobsters swindle millions of dollars from unsuspecting poker players during a series of rigged games.
All this was outlined in a federal indictment that dropped Thursday, Oct. 23, leading to the arrest of Billups and others. According to the indictment, defendants allegedly used wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games in places including the Hamptons, Miami, Las Vegas and Manhattan.
Billups, who was not the coach of the Trail Blazers at the time of his alleged involvement but merely a former NBA player, was one of the draws that helped lure victims to the illegal 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," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella Jr. said. "Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars per game."
But exactly how much money did these poker games allegedly defraud from victims?
