Former NBA coach and player Damon Jones admitted his role as a celebrity “face card” used to attract whales to high-stakes rigged poker games in a Brooklyn courtroom yesterday, becoming the first person to plead guilty in the fraud case.
He also pleaded guilty to providing inside information to gamblers when he was coaching the Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers. The two cases are separate.
“I’d like to sincerely apologize to the court, my family, my peers and also the National Basketball Association,” Jones said Tuesday, according to The New York Times. “I knew these games were rigged and that players were being cheated. I’m really sorry to everyone involved for my actions.”
Chauncey Billups, who has been put on leave as the Portland Blazers head coach, is also being accused of being a “face card” to attract players to poker games that used high-tech to cheat players. Corrupted shuffle machines, tiny cameras, and even a poker table with an x-ray unit were used to cheat players out of millions of dollars, says the Feds.
Billups pleaded not guilty in the case. He’s scheduled to go to trial Nov. 2.
Billups and Jones were two of 31 people charged by the Department of Justice in the poker cheating scandal.
“As shown by his guilty pleas today, Damon Jones converted his fame and ties to professional basketball into a multi-faceted criminal betting operation. He used private locker room and medical information from multiple NBA teams to cheat legitimate sportsbooks. He also, separately, lured unsuspecting victims to high-stakes rigged poker games,” stated United States Attorney Joe Nocella in a press release. “Jones will now face the consequences for his corrupt conduct. Insider betting and rigged poker schemes erode the integrity of American sports and fair contest. This Office will continue in its strong tradition of holding accountable anyone who seeks to profit through fraud and corruption.”
The DOJ estimates that nearly $10 million was cheated in the poker games, which were run by the New York mafia known as La Cosa Nostra. Federal sentencing guidelines call for a punishment of 63 to 78 months, but prosecutors agreed to take 15 months off it if Jones entered a guilty plea by April 30, according to the AP.
He will also face 21 to 27 months in the sport’s betting case, where prosecutors say he passed on inside information about certain player’s availability to gamblers. Jones is free until he is sentenced Jan. 6, 2027.
