Shocking Poker Scam: Italian Mob and NBA Head Coach Involved

Operation Royal Flush

Among those arrested is Chauncey Billups, 49, head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, who’s been in charge since 2021. Billups is a 2004 NBA champion and 2004 NBA Finals MVP with the Detroit Pistons, a five-time All-Star, and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year.

The FBI investigation “Operation Royal Flush” lasted nearly four years across 11 states 

The first recorded case of cheating dates back to 2019. Billups and Damon Jones (also a former NBA player, assistant coach, and analyst) allegedly used their names and popularity to lure unsuspecting players into rigged games. A large circle of suspects worked together. They used shuffling machines that had been secretly altered with concealed technology to read the cards in the deck and predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, as well as other methods: a poker chip tray analyzer that secretly read cards using a hidden camera, an X-ray table capable of reading cards face down, and special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could detect pre-marked cards.

Following another rigged game in late October 2020 in which Billups participated, he received a $50,000 bank wire from Sophia. However, the sums involved in the case are much higher — one victim reportedly lost $1.8 million in New York in the summer of 2023, and the overall profits of the criminal ring are estimated at around $7 million.

The FBI attached multiple chat logs to the case, showing the scammers coordinating their signals.

Open Secret?

It’s worth noting that Billups’s “game” was an open secret among the poker community. Back in 2023, Matt Berkey mentioned it on his Only Friends podcast [starts at 27:20]:

“There are a lot of stories about it. There's one that cropped up, must've been like 5 years ago, 2019-ish I think? 4 years ago? Where there was this game, it started in LA and then it came to Vegas for a few days, and it was all built around Chauncey Billups. And I had heard about the game, and the person who told me about it was like "Look, I know the game runners, I am telling you 100% this game is on the up-and-up." And I was like "Well, I know a lot of the people that are involved and I am telling you 100% that it is not on the up-and-up.

We kind of went back and forth and I agreed that I just wasn't going to go play. But I had some friends who went and played it both in LA and in Vegas, and it obviously was like, for sure confirmed to be cheated. Like people who clearly didn't even understand the rules of No Limit Hold'em are just jamming hundreds of big blinds with a gutty and then just drilling it. Only the pros are losing....”

These lines echo an FBI-released chat log in which a woman identified as “Sophie in New York” voices concern that Earnest and Billups both managed to “hit 2 gutshot on the river against the same guy… both calls were over 30k”, urging her partners to be more inventive and discreet.

Billups’s name isn’t mentioned directly in the other NBA betting case, but Front Office Sports mentioned it fits the description of “Co-Conspirator 8,” who allegedly passed inside information to Eric Earnest (involved in both schemes) that Trail Blazers planned to tank and bench its best players for a March 2023 regular-season game — allowing bets to be placed on the team’s loss at good odds.

Is There a Connection?

Earlier this summer, former NBA player Gilbert Arenas was also arrested for hosting illegal poker games. After Billups’s arrest, Arenas posted a selfie grinning with a paper bag labeled “INFORMANT LUNCH.”

Looks like it might not even be a joke.