- A Brooklyn federal judge has fixed Nov. 2 as the trial date for the mob-backed rigged poker ring, a case with 31 defendants and roughly three dozen across two linked indictments.
- Former NBA player Damon Jones became the first to plead guilty, admitting in April to wire fraud conspiracy in both the poker and the sports-betting schemes.
- Prosecutors have moved toward plea deals with as many as 21 defendants, though a person familiar with the talks says Chauncey Billups is not expected to be among them.
- Billups, the Trail Blazers coach and Hall of Famer, has pleaded not guilty and faces up to 20 years, setting up a summer of plea maneuvering ahead of any trial.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. - The sprawling federal case accusing NBA figures and four Mafia families of fleecing wealthy poker players now has both a trial date and its first guilty plea, and the months ahead will hinge on a single question: which of the three dozen defendants cut a deal, and which take their chances in front of a jury.
At a March status hearing, U.S. District Judge Ramon Reyes set the trial to begin Nov. 2, moving past his earlier hope of a fall start and telling the lawyers to be ready to go. The poker prosecution, one of two indictments unsealed in October, lists 31 defendants and is so unwieldy that the two sides are still negotiating how to break it into trial-sized groups.
The first crack showed in April. Former player and coach Damon Jones pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, one tied to the rigged card games and one to a separate operation that traded on inside injury information, with the combined losses topping $10 million. Jones admitted he was paid to lend his name as a "face card," drawing deep-pocketed players to tables in Miami and the Hamptons, and told the court he understood the games were fixed. He was the first of the more than 30 charged to concede guilt.
A first plea tends to reshape everything that comes after it. Whoever moves earliest often secures the friendliest terms, and any promise to cooperate gives prosecutors fresh leverage over the defendants still holding out.
Who's Flipping
The wider numbers point toward a wave of resolutions. In early March, prosecutors told the court they were ready to extend formal agreements to a dozen of the defendants and were in encouraging talks with nine more, a combination that would clear better than two-thirds of the poker case without a trial. The government has declined to name those defendants in its filings, so the cooperator list will surface in public only as each plea is entered through the summer.
Who's Fighting
The most prominent holdout looks to be Chauncey Billups. A person familiar with the negotiations has said the Hall of Famer is not expected to strike a deal, a posture unchanged since the earlier stage of the Chauncey Billups poker case. The Portland coach and 2004 Finals MVP has denied wrongdoing throughout, even as prosecutors paint him as a celebrity "face card" who steered victims toward rigged tables. He faces as much as 20 years if a jury convicts him.
He is not the only one digging in. Prosecutors have described Robert Stroud as a chief architect of the cheating operation, citing a search of his Florida home that turned up poker chips, a table and cameras tucked into the air vents. On the organized-crime side, Angelo Ruggiero Jr., described as a Genovese figure who ran one of the recurring games, was refused a $5 million bond by Judge Reyes.
The Heist At The Table
The allegations play like a caper. High-stakes poker games staged in Manhattan, Las Vegas, Miami and the Hamptons were rigged with X-ray tables, doctored shuffling machines, chip trays concealing cameras and contact lenses that revealed marked cards, prosecutors say, while the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families supplied protection and skimmed a cut of the more than $7 million collected over six years. It is only the latest mob-tinged poker matter to surface this year, arriving after separate allegations that tied Gilbert Arenas to an illegally run game.
With the calendar now set, the summer turns into a waiting game. Every plea entered in Brooklyn shrinks the field bound for the Nov. 2 trial and reveals who is wagering on a deal rather than a verdict. For Billups, who built a Hall of Fame career on reading the floor, the decision is whether to fold or call.