Macon court sets bond for Georgia men tied to Chauncey Billups gambling case

The two Middle Georgia men tied to an illegal gambling case that has implicated NBA coach Chauncey Billups and several “crime families” were granted bonds in Thursday court hearings, according to federal court records.

Bonds for Tony Goodson, of Forsyth, and John Mazzola, of Gray, were set by Judge Charles H. Weigle after they appeared in front of him in Macon Thursday afternoon. Kenny Han, from Queens, New York, also appeared in Macon federal court, according to court records.

The three men were among the dozens indicted in the major gambling case that made national headlines, due to Billups’ involvement, as well as the Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese and Genovese families, who are all tied to La Cosa Nostra, according to the indictment released Thursday. Federal prosecutors claim that the victims’ losses were over $7 million.

Goodson was given a bond of $50,000, needing to pay $5,000 in order to be released. Mazzola was given a $25,000 bond, needing to pay $2,500 in order to be released, according to court records.

Han was granted a $25,000 unsecured bond, meaning he does not have to pay it so long as he follows conditions set by the court for his release, court records say.

All three will now have their federal cases transferred to New York, where the case is based for all the defendants involved, court records say.

Jonathan Dodson, the federal defender for Goodson, declined to comment when contacted by The Telegraph. P. MacKenzie Miller, attorney for Han, said Han was on a personal trip at the time of his arrest and Macon was a quick stop for him.

Miller and Doye Green Jr., Mazzola’s attorney, said they would remain attorneys for their clients until their first court appearance in New York, where they will have the ability to hire an attorney in the area or ask for an appointed attorney.

Goodson, Mazzola, Han, Billups among the other defendants allegedly worked together to conduct illegal poker games and took millions from wealthy victims who thought they played fair, but still illegal, games. The suspects are accused of using rigged card shuffling machines and other methods to fix the outcome of games, the indictment says.

The other defendants include Ernest Aiello, Nelson Alvarez, Louis Apicella, Ammar Awawdeh, Saul Becher, Billups, Matthew Daddino, Eric Earnest, Lee Fama, John Gallo, Marco Garzon, Thomas Gelardo, Jamie Gilet, Shane Hennen, Osman Hoti, Horatio Hu, Zhen Hu, Damon Jones, Joseph Lanni, Curtis Meeks, Nicholas Minucci, Michael Renzulli, Angelo Ruggiero Jr., Anthony Shnayderman, Robert Stroud, Seth Trustman, Sophia Wei and Julius Ziliani, according to the indictment.

The games were “operated with the express permission and approval of, members and associates of certain organized crime families of La Cosa Nostra, who provided support and protection for the games and collected owed debts from the games in exchange for a portion of the illegal gambling proceeds,” a grand jury charged in the indictment.

In a separate, but similar, indictment, NBA player Terry Rozier and others were accused of sharing private information about NBA players so people could place lucrative bets on games, according to the indictment.

The Middle Georgia men implicated in the alleged scheme face one count of wire fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Goodson faces an additional charge of illegal gambling, while Mazzola faces an additional charge of participating in a robbing conspiracy under the Hobbs Act, which was established to “combat racketeering in labor-management disputes,” according to federal law.

Well-known athletes part of this scheme were called ‘face cards’

The rigged poker games took place in various places in New York, including Washington Place, Lexington Avenue and East Hampton.

The defendants and others would invite the victims, who were wealthy, to the rigged games. To attract the victims, well-known professional athletes worked alongside the defendants to attract the victims and received a portion of their money, according to the indictment. Billups and Jones were those professional athletes, also known as “Face Cards,” the indictment said.

The games used shuffling machines to randomly shuffle the cards to ensure fairness, but victims didn’t know that the machines “were secretly altered to use concealed technology to read the cards in the deck, predict which player at the table had the best poker hand, and relay that information via interstate wires to an off-site operator,” according to the indictment.

The operator would then communicate the information from the machine to players who were in on the rigging, according to the indictment. This helped those players beat the victims.

Other cheating technologies were used, including electronic poker chip trays that secretly read cards placed on the poker table, decoy cellphones that could analyze cards and playing cards that had markers visible only to people wearing specially designed contact lenses, the indictment said.

The members of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese crime families would threaten and intimidate victims to ensure they paid their debts as a result of the illegal poker games, the indictment says. They also protected the games from competition and other threats.

“In exchange, members and associates of the Bonanno, Gambino and Genovese Crime Families received portions of the proceeds,” federal prosecutors said.

The defendants would launder their criminal proceeds through shell companies and third parties, the indictment says. Federal prosecutors say that, on one occasion in April 2019, one of the victims who participated in a poker game in Las Vegas, Nevada, was defrauded of at least $50,000. Another occasion, in June or July 2023, one person was defrauded of $1.8 million.

The defendants would use threats of force and violence to be repaid victim’s debts from the poker games, according to the indictment. Federal prosecutors said that several victims were extorted to secure the repayment of debts.

Lastly, several of the defendants robbed at gunpoint a former supplier’s rigged shuffling machine on Sept. 7, 2023.

This story was originally published October 24, 2025 at 4:08 PM.