CHAUNCEY BILLUPS WAS seated at the center table of the ceremonial courtroom inside the United States Courthouse in Brooklyn.
Wearing a gray suit, Billups entered his not guilty plea Nov. 24 on federal charges connected to a rigged poker game that had enveloped the attention of the NBA and the rest of the sports world. He’s facing money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy charges, both of which carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
In front of the 30 other defendants, Billups, mostly expressionless, sat front and center for more than three hours as Judge Ramon E. Reyes heard arguments over all sorts of procedural and logistical issues, casting Billups as the face of a trial that includes violent criminals with long rap sheets, mobsters and members of the criminal underworld, as prosecutors allege he was a “face card” in the rigged poker games, someone whose fame lured victims to the table.
Billups’ wife, Piper, and three daughters were seated two rows behind him. He surveyed the courtroom, then turned to look over at the gallery of reporters seated to his left who had come to observe and document the proceedings. He lingered a bit on the faces he knew from his career as a basketball player and head coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, a legacy now very much in question.
Billups’ only words that day were his plea on the charges against him. His attorney, Marc Mukasey, offered no comment when entering and exiting the courthouse.
It will be a long time before anyone fully knows how Billups allegedly became involved in this scandal and the extent to which he was. It’s a process that could take years.
In the courtroom, the judge put a protective order on the evidence in the case disseminated to attorneys — which prosecutors say includes a terabyte of bank records, surveillance photos and other electronic data — and said he hoped a trial could begin in September.
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All 31 defendants in the case are required to appear in that ceremonial courtroom in Brooklyn on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for a status hearing in the case now that the defendants have had a few months to review the evidence in the government’s case.
Mukasey, who represented President Donald Trump during a 2019 suit to stop Manhattan’s district attorney from obtaining his tax returns, did not respond to messages left by ESPN asking for comment in advance of Wednesday’s hearing.
Ron Naclerio was one of the people who appeared in court in November to show support for a man he met nearly three decades earlier. The legendary coach of Benjamin Cardozo High in Queens first met Billups when he was a star point guard coming out of Colorado and trained him for the 1997 NBA draft.
“He saw me, we hugged, and I said, ‘I know you’re going through hell, but just keep going,'” Naclerio told ESPN. “Then his lawyer came over to me and thanked me for showing up.”
As Billups and his family exited the courtroom, throngs of cameras and people followed as Billups went to post his $5 million bail.
“It was overwhelming,” Naclerio said. “I mean, it’s obvious for a guy that used to get stopped to do interviews for winning an NBA championship or the Hall of Fame announcement, to get bombarded for something like this. I just said, ‘Wow, the bombardment now is such a low compared to the highs that he’s had.'”
ONE PERSON BILLUPS did not speak to or acknowledge at that hearing in November was his friend, former NBA player and coach Damon Jones, who was indicted in the federal probes into rigged poker games and illegal gambling and has pleaded not guilty at both of his arraignments.
Five years earlier they’d lived together in Billups’ house in Colorado, riding out the loneliest early months of the COVID-19 pandemic along with Billups’ best friend, Tyronn Lue, then the lead assistant for the LA Clippers and Lue’s cousin, J. Carter. Billups hired a chef who’d been furloughed from a high-end restaurant, asked him to prepare meals for his friends to ease some of the burden on his wife, and the three spent their days watching film of the NBA season, which had been paused, he told ESPN in 2021.
“All that time spent talking and studying,” Billups said then, after he’d officially joined Lue’s staff as an assistant in Los Angeles. “That’s actually what really made my decision to coach.”
Billups had worked in broadcasting since he retired as a player in 2014, first for ESPN and then for the Clippers. He and Lue had been close friends since they were teenagers. Lue has not been accused of anything in the federal probes and, in his public statements on the matter, has denied any involvement. Jones had played against both during his NBA career and served on Lue’s staff in Cleveland.
During the hearing in November, prosecutors said they are looking into 25 poker games between 2019 and 2023. In the indictment, Billups and Jones are mentioned in allegations about two games — in April 2019 and October 2020 in Las Vegas — a year before Billups invited Jones to live with him in the spring of 2020 and a few months before the second game.
Prosecutors allege that both Billups and Jones were recruited to the games by Robert Stroud, a 67-year-old Kentucky man with ties to the Gambino crime family. In the indictment, prosecutors allege that Stroud recruited famous athletes or celebrities “to lure wealthy victims into playing” in the rigged games, then “paid them a portion of the criminal proceeds.”
Stroud, who also pleaded not guilty, has a long criminal history of violence and gambling, including a manslaughter conviction from a shooting during a card game in Louisville in 1994.
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How Stroud recruited them and the extent to which each man allegedly participated remains under sealed evidence. But evidence from Stroud’s iCloud account included in the initial indictment showed a $50,000 wire to a 40-year-old Queens woman named Sophie Wei, who then wired money directly to Billups.
Wei, whom investigators refer to as “Pookie” in their indictment, is a Taiwanese-Brazilian artist who is connected in the music, entertainment and basketball worlds. On her now-private Instagram page, Wei has posed in photos with musicians Drake, Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo.
She hyped commissions she did for Kevin Hart and for Shaquille O’Neal’s sons, Shaqir and Shareef. She also showcased her work at the 2024 NBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis.
Prosecutors allege Wei was one of the organizers of the rigged poker games in New York and Las Vegas. Her court-appointed attorney, Jacqueline Cistaro, declined to comment when contacted by ESPN.
SITTING BEHIND BILLUPS in the courtroom was 53-year-old Eric “Spook” Earnest. His court-appointed attorney sat directly behind Billups’ table.
In their indictment, prosecutors describe Earnest and Billups as longtime friends and included text messages from the October 2020 game in which Wei and Stroud discuss the need for Billups and Earnest to intentionally lose a hand to avoid suspicion of cheating.
Wei suggested they bring another member of the cheating team over to the table and have “Chauncey and/ spook lose to him.” Stroud agreed with the idea, to which Wei responded in text, “They already know all the signals.”
The “they” in Wei’s text message refers to Billups and Earnest, meaning investigators believe Billups was not just the famous athlete at the table brought in to draw wealthy players to the game but a member of the cheating team who knew the signals they used to cheat and followed them to defraud victims out of millions.
It is not clear how or when Billups and Earnest became friends. Public records indicate Earnest spent most of his life in the greater St. Louis area. Court records indicate that, in October 2007, Earnest pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana as part of a federal investigation into a St. Louis syndicate with connections to the Black Mafia Family — a Detroit-based drug trafficking and money laundering organization led by the Flenory brothers — Demetrious “Big Meech” and Terry “Southwest” — which has inspired three documentaries and the Starz television drama, “BMF,” produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.
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Billups, who played seven seasons with the Detroit Pistons (2002-09), winning a championship in 2004, has a connection to Terry Flenory. On April 14, 2021, Flenory — who was released from prison in May 2020 after serving 12 years of a 30-year sentence — posted a photo of himself and Billups posing in front of the Detroit River with the Ambassador Bridge in the background and a caption:
“Woke up this morning to a surprise my man BIG SHOT Billups tapping in before both of us head to work.”
Billups, then in his first year as an assistant coach with the Clippers, who beat the Pistons 100-98 later that night, responded:
“Always love bro. Great times ahead. Happy for u.”
On Oct. 30, The Athletic cited a former federal DEA task force officer who said that Earnest bragged on wiretaps about his connections to NBA players and other famous athletes, and identified links on social media between Earnest’s family and Billups’ family, noting that Billups follows Earnest’s wife and daughter.
Earnest’s attorney Peter E. Brill also did not respond to messages left by ESPN.
Earnest allegedly played a critical role in this scandal — and his link to Billups continued until at least 2023. Before a March 24, 2023, game between the Chicago Bulls and the Trail Blazers, Billups, then Portland’s head coach, allegedly relayed nonpublic information to a man who subsequently used it to wager $100,000.
That man was Eric Earnest.
BILLUPS WAS ONE of two defendants to be released on bail after posting his $5 million bond. The other was Anthony Schnayderman, whom prosecutors allege was the primary money launderer in the operation.
Though that was the largest sum of any of the 31 defendants to post bail, legal experts consulted by ESPN suggested that amount could be due to the lenient conditions put on his release, as well as Billups’ means and notoriety.
Billups used a house he owns in Colorado as collateral for the bond, which was signed in court by his wife and by daughter Sydney.
Billups has been in one of his two Colorado houses for the past several months, according to sources with direct knowledge of his whereabouts. The 15,000-square-foot Greenwood Village estate he purchased in 2007 was used as collateral for his $5 million bond. He sold his Lake Oswego, Oregon, house for $4.275 million shortly after his arrest and indefinite unpaid leave from his head coaching job with the Trail Blazers.
He spends his days quietly, according to sources close to him, with his family and friends in the Denver area, playing golf, watching games and communicating with a handful of NBA brethren. The terms of his release restrict him from traveling outside the United States, and any state or city other than Colorado, California, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, D.C., or New York City.
The last public image of Billups came as he left the courthouse that afternoon in late November. He walked quickly through the crowd of camera crews along Duane Avenue in Brooklyn. A black Sprinter van waited for Billups, his family and team of attorneys about 400 feet away.
Billups kept his eyes up the entire time, projecting the kind of poise he was known for as a player.
Nobody took questions or slowed down until they reached the van. Billups didn’t get inside as soon as he reached the doors. He stopped, turned to face the crowd, then waited until his wife and daughters were inside.
