Eric Earnest pleads guilty in the NBA inside-information case, admits to a Blazers bet; his lawyer says the tip did not come from Chauncey Billups

Eric Earnest, the lead defendant in the federal case over inside information on NBA games, has pleaded guilty. He admitted in a Brooklyn courtroom on Thursday, Oct. 22, that he conspired to place an illegal bet on an NBA game. Right after the hearing, his lawyer pushed back on the government’s version of where Earnest got his tip, and said it did not come from Chauncey Billups.

“Our position is that Chauncey Billups did not at any time provide inside information to Mr. Earnest that he used to place any bets,” attorney Peter Brill told reporters outside court. He called the gap between his client and prosecutors on that point a “fundamental disagreement.”

What Earnest admitted in court

Earnest, 54, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In court he said he “agreed with another person to place an illegal bet on an NBA game with a sportsbook” around March 24, 2023.

That date matters. According to the indictment, an unnamed co-conspirator told Earnest before that night’s game that the Portland Trail Blazers would be tanking and that several Portland players would sit out against the Chicago Bulls. Portland, out of the playoff race, rested regulars including Damian Lillard and Jerami Grant and lost 124-96. Earnest is accused of passing the tip along, and others in the group then bet more than $100,000 on Portland to lose before the injury news was public, according to the court filings. Lillard is back in Portland this season, as we covered in our story on his Portland return.

The indictment never names that co-conspirator. It describes an Oregon resident who was “an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021.” Those details line up with Billups’ career, and he was Portland’s head coach at the time. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Berman told the court that the government would have proved the co-conspirator was an NBA head coach when the bet was placed and had passed inside information to people who bet on an NBA game. He did not name the person either.

Where this leaves Billups

Billups has not been charged in the inside-information case. His lawyer, Marc Mukasey, declined to comment on Brill’s statement on Thursday.

Billups is charged in a second federal case, over poker games that prosecutors say were rigged, and he has pleaded not guilty. Earnest pleaded guilty in that case too, at a separate hearing the same day. He admitted taking part in poker games that “were rigged against certain players” starting in April 2019. Prosecutor Michael Gibaldi said he was ready to show that Earnest played in games using shuffling machines that could help predict the cards at the table, with that information then passed to the people running the cheat.

A guilty plea by one defendant is not a finding against anyone else. Billups and the remaining defendants in both cases, including Terry Rozier, are scheduled to go to trial in early 2027.

The Rozier side of the case

The inside-information case became public in October 2025, when Billups and Rozier were arrested on the same day along with more than 30 other people across the two cases. Prosecutors accuse Rozier of telling a friend that he would leave a March 23, 2023, Hornets game against New Orleans early, which let bettors cash in on his statistical unders. He played a little more than nine minutes that night. Rozier pleaded not guilty in December 2025. The Portland bet that Earnest has now admitted came one day later.

What comes next

Each wire-fraud conspiracy count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000 or double the gain or loss. Prosecutors estimated that federal sentencing guidelines point to 30 to 37 months for Earnest in the inside-information case and 63 to 78 months in the poker case. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 4, 2027, in the poker case and on April 15, 2027, in the inside-information case.

The case has already changed how fans can bet on the league. Before this season the NBA told its partner sportsbooks to drop opening-tip wagers and stop letting bettors stack one player’s unders in parlays, as we explained in our story on the new betting limits. Follow every league-wide story on our Around the league page.