Professional sports and illegal gambling have always had an uneasy relationship, but the NBA gambling scandal of 2025 crossed a threshold the league had never reached before. On October 23, 2025, the FBI arrested 34 people in two coordinated federal operations linking active NBA figures to illegal sports betting rings and Mafia-backed poker games. Here is everything known about who was involved, what they are accused of, and where each case stands today.
All NBA figures arrested, charged or investigated
The table below covers every player, coach, or NBA-connected figure involved in the gambling scandal who has faced federal charges, a league ban, or a formal investigation.
| Name | Role at the time | Federal charges | Status (June 2026) |
| Terry Rozier | Guard, Miami Heat | Wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, bribery in sporting contests (added May 2026) | Trial scheduled September 2026; waived by the Heat in April 2026; $26.6M salary forfeited after arbitration reversal |
| Chauncey Billups | Head coach, Portland Trail Blazers | Wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy | Trial scheduled November 2026; on unpaid administrative leave |
| Damon Jones | Former player / unpaid assistant coach (Lakers) | 2 counts of wire fraud conspiracy (sports betting + poker) | Pleaded guilty April 28, 2026; sentencing set for January 6, 2027 |
| Jontay Porter | Two-way player, Toronto Raptors | No federal charges in this case (separate 2024 case) | Lifetime ban issued by the NBA in April 2024 |
| Malik Beasley | Guard, Detroit Pistons | No charges filed | EDNY investigation closed August 2025; NBA parallel inquiry ongoing |
The October 2025 indictments did not emerge in a vacuum. Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, legal wagering has expanded to 39 states and grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. Canada followed with its own single-game betting legislation in 2021, fuelling a wave of online entertainment platforms offering sports betting across the country. That expansion created both the infrastructure and the incentive for the kind of insider exploitation at the center of these cases.
What the two federal indictments actually allege
The October 2025 prosecution rests on two distinct cases that were announced simultaneously but involve separate defendants, separate judges, and separate criminal mechanics. What the media has broadly referred to as the NBA betting scandal actually covers two unrelated schemes. Three defendants are named in both indictments: Damon Jones, Eric Earnest, and Shane Hennen, which is how prosecutors have argued the schemes are connected.
Scheme 1: insider sports betting (United States v. Rozier et al.)
The first indictment charges six defendants with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for exploiting confidential NBA information to place illegal bets. Prosecutors identified at least seven games between February 2023 and March 2024 on which hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal wagers were placed using non-public information.
The central allegation against Terry Rozier is that he tipped off associates that he would exit a March 23, 2023 game against the New Orleans Pelicans early, allowing them to cash over $250,000 in bets on his player-prop unders. Playing for the Charlotte Hornets at the time, he left after nine minutes and 34 seconds with a reported foot injury. Because he exceeded his rebounds line, the agreed bribe was reduced from $100,000 to $70,000.
Damon Jones, serving as an unpaid assistant with the Lakers, is accused of leaking injury information about two players identified in the indictment only as “Player 3” and “Player 4”, widely understood to be LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Before a February 9, 2023 Lakers-Bucks game, Jones allegedly texted an associate: “Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight before the information is out.” James did not play that night. Before a January 15, 2024 Lakers-Thunder game, a co-conspirator placed $100,000 against the Lakers on a tip from Jones about Player 4’s injury, but the player performed well above expectations and the bet lost. Neither James nor Davis has been accused of any wrongdoing.
Co-conspirators operated a tipping service called Vezino Locks, which fed picks to paying subscribers based on the insider information obtained through these connections.
Scheme 2: Mafia-backed rigged poker games (United States v. Aiello)
The second indictment covers 31 defendants and centers on a network of high-stakes private poker games held in Manhattan, Las Vegas, Miami, and the Hamptons. The games were rigged from the start using altered card-shuffling machines, hidden cameras embedded in chip trays, and X-ray equipment built into the table to read players’ hidden cards.
Chauncey Billups and Damon Jones are accused of serving as celebrity “face cards” (a poker term for high-value figures used to attract players to a table) to lure wealthy, unsuspecting players to the tables. Prosecutors say organizers texted during one game that a victim was “star struck” by Billups’s presence. The operation was backed by members of the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese crime families, which collected a share of the proceeds and used extortion and robbery to enforce debt collection. Victims lost at least $7 million across multiple games dating back to at least 2019.
The Jontay Porter case: a separate but connected scandal
Before the October 2025 arrests turned the NBA sports betting scandal into a federal matter, the league had already faced a significant integrity crisis in 2024. Jontay Porter, a two-way player for the Toronto Raptors, was banned for life by the league in April 2024 after an investigation confirmed three categories of violations:
- He disclosed confidential information about his own health status to a known sports bettor, who then placed bets on his performance unders.
- He limited his participation in at least one game on March 20, 2024, by claiming illness, in order to influence the outcome of prop bets placed by his associates.
- He placed at least 13 bets on NBA games using an associate’s online betting account between January and March 2024, wagering a total of $54,094 and collecting net winnings of $21,965. Three of those bets included parlay wagers on Raptors games in which Porter bet his own team to lose.
Commissioner Adam Silver described the violations as “blatant” and confirmed the NBA had shared its findings with federal prosecutors. Porter’s case is referenced directly in the October 2025 indictments, as several of the defendants in the sports betting scheme were connected to the same network of operators that had placed bets around his performance.
How the FBI investigation started and how it unfolded
The investigation did not begin with the October 2025 arrests. It developed over more than two years, with the initial alert coming from outside the league’s own monitoring systems.
- March 23, 2023: unusual prop bet activity on Terry Rozier is flagged by licensed sportsbooks across at least six operators. The FBI’s Joint Organized Crime Task Force opens a parallel criminal investigation into NBA-connected individuals.
- 2023-2024: the NBA opens its own internal investigation into Rozier and clears him of wrongdoing.
- Early 2025: reports emerge that the FBI is investigating multiple NBA figures for potential gambling violations.
- October 23, 2025: federal authorities execute arrests across 11 states. Thirty-four people are taken into custody as two indictments are unsealed in Brooklyn federal court. Rozier is arrested in Orlando on the same day the Heat play their season opener against the Magic. Billups coaches the Trail Blazers’ opening game before being placed on administrative leave the following day.
- November 2025: Billups is arraigned and pleads not guilty. Prosecutors reveal that plea negotiations are underway with some defendants.
- December 8, 2025: Rozier is arraigned and pleads not guilty, released on $3 million bond.
- April 28, 2026: Damon Jones becomes the first defendant to plead guilty, entering guilty pleas in two back-to-back hearings in Brooklyn federal court.
- May 28, 2026: Marves Fairley pleads guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges in both the NBA and NCAA gambling cases. Hours later, prosecutors file a superseding indictment against Rozier, adding a bribery charge alleging he accepted payment to leave the March 2023 game early.
Where the cases stand and what comes next
As of June 2026, the prosecution is still in its early stages. Jones has pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing, while Rozier and Billups are headed to trial.
Sentences and pending trials
Damon Jones faces sentencing guidelines of 21 to 27 months in prison in the sports betting case. In the poker case, the guidelines call for 63 to 78 months, though prosecutors agreed to subtract 15 months in exchange for his guilty plea, placing his likely exposure at 48 to 63 months. Jones also agreed to forfeit $73,000. According to court filings, 11 other defendants in the broader investigation are expected to enter plea agreements.
Terry Rozier’s trial is scheduled for September 2026. The additional bribery charge filed in May significantly expanded his exposure beyond the original wire fraud and money laundering counts. The Heat waived him from their roster in April 2026. The salary situation evolved in two stages: an initial arbitrator ruled the NBA could not withhold his $26.6 million salary for the 2025-26 season under the CBA, but a subsequent ruling ordered Rozier to forfeit that salary after finding he had violated the terms of his contract.
Chauncey Billups remains on unpaid administrative leave from the Trail Blazers. His trial is scheduled for November 2026. He has sold his home in Lake Oswego, Oregon since the arrest. His attorney has maintained that Billups is “a man of integrity” and has denied the charges.
The league’s blind spot
The arrests exposed a direct failure in the NBA’s own monitoring systems: the league reviewed Rozier in 2024 and cleared him, while the FBI quietly built a case that led to his arrest in October 2025. Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged publicly that the FBI has investigative resources the league cannot match, a concession that shifted internal pressure toward structural reform rather than individual punishment.
Prop bets as the core vulnerability
In the weeks following the October 2025 arrests, the NBA sent a memo to all 30 teams tightening protocols around sports betting, and specifically identified player prop bets as the most exploitable category, since a single piece of non-public information about a player’s availability can shift a prop line before sportsbooks have time to adjust. That vulnerability sits at the center of the first indictment, and explains why the league has since signalled a wider review of what types of bets should be permitted on individual player performance.
With trials for Rozier and Billups both scheduled before the end of 2026, and the league simultaneously in talks with prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket about official partnerships, the NBA faces the unusual position of prosecuting a gambling scandal while actively expanding its footprint in the betting industry.
