For those following the saga of suspended Portland Trail Blazers Coach Chauncey Billups, one of the figures who was indicted on federal gambling charges last fall—ex-NBA player Damon Jones—pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to illegal gambling. Jones is the first defendant in the NBA-related cases to admit his guilt. Though accused of similar actions, Billups has not followed the lead of Jones. His case remains open.
An article published by ESPN, following Associated
Press reports, details Jones’ plea:
Reading a prepared statement to the court after pleading guilty in the sports betting case, [Jones] acknowledged that he conspired with others to defraud sports betting companies by using “insider information that I obtained as a result of my relationships as a former player.”
“I would like to sincerely apologize to the court, my family, my peers and also the National Basketball Association,” Jones said.
He said the goal of the sports betting conspiracy, which ran from December 2022 to March 2024, was to use his insider knowledge — which prosecutors say involved nonpublic information about injuries to NBA stars — to make money from sportsbooks.
He acknowledged that his actions violated the NBA’s code of conduct and also the terms of service on sports betting websites.
In addition to providing insider information on the professional basketball league, Jones was also accused of participating in private poker games as a “face card”, an insider hired by the organizers to attract players and to conspire at the table to bilk them out of their buy-in. Jones also admitted culpability in that manner:
Reading from a statement, Jones said that based on conversations with his co-conspirators before and after the poker games, “I knew these games were rigged and that players were being cheated.”
Billups has been accused of the same basic infractions as Jones, exactly so in the poker scandal, in different cases of insider information sharing when it comes to NBA betting.
