Colorado Legend Chauncy Billups was arrested on Thursday, October 23, 2025. He was arrested for illegal gambling and rigged poker games. The FBI arrested him along with an active NBA player, Terry Rozier. The charges include conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.
This poker rigging began with the technology in the cards, tables, and shufflers. The card-shuffling machine read the order in which the cards were dealt and relayed it to an operator off-site. Some games were played on X-ray tables or hidden cameras in the poker chip trays to assist in reading cards. In other games, they would wear special glasses for them to read marked cards, unable to see with their naked eye.
Once the operator, off-site, knew everyone’s card, he would relay to the “quarterback,” and he/she would give tiny signs to the rest of the cheaters on what moves to make.
An example of this is cited in a court document from a September 2024 game in Miami, where defendant John Mazzola played quarterback. If Mazzola had the best hand, he would tap his arm are wrist. If another inside player did, Mazzola would touch his 1,000 poker chip and so on and so forth. If a “fish” had the best hand, Mazzola would touch his black chips, telling the insiders to fold.
Billups has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering. Both Billups and Terry Rozier have been placed on leave by their teams. Rozier was arrested Thursday morning at a hotel in Orlando. He is accused of illegal sports gambling using insider information about the NBA. He was using non-public information in at least seven NBA games between March 2023 and March 2024 involving the Hornets, Magic, and Trail Blazers (head coach Chauncy Billups), Lakers, and Raptors, according to the indictment.
Billups is currently not in jail but has strict and specific travel and conduct restrictions (house arrest). After court, he was forced to give up his passport and is restricted to Oregon, New York, and his home state, Colorado.
