Gilbert Arenas Arrested for Allegedly Hosting Illegal High-Stakes Poker Games at LA Mansion

Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas was taken into custody on Wednesday after being accused of orchestrating an illegal gambling operation at his Los Angeles-area home.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Arenas is facing federal charges for conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business and for making false statements to federal investigators. He entered a not guilty plea and has since been released on $50,000 bond, with a trial scheduled to begin on September 23.

The DOJ alleges that Arenas rented out his Encino mansion specifically to host high-stakes illegal poker games. These games were allegedly coordinated by Yevgeni Gershman, an Israeli national with suspected links to organized crime. Gershman, alongside a small team, recruited women, private chefs, valets, and armed guards to run the events while collecting a rake—a percentage of the pot—from each game.

This latest development adds another chapter to Arenas’s long and well-documented association with gambling. “There’s always a line between being a prankster and going too far, and I was always on that line,” Arenas once admitted in Netflix’s ‘Untold’ documentary, which covered the infamous 2009 locker room incident involving Arenas and then-teammate Javaris Crittenton. The two pulled guns on each other following a locker room card game gone wrong—a confrontation that led to season-long suspensions for both players.

As a result of that incident, Arenas was sentenced to two years of probation, ordered to perform 400 hours of community service, and fined $5,000. After bouncing between two more NBA teams, he eventually retired in 2012. Crittenton, on the other hand, never returned to the league and was later convicted of manslaughter in 2011 after the fatal shooting of a bystander. He was released in 2023.

From running illicit card games in NBA locker rooms to allegedly facilitating high-stakes poker in luxury mansions, Arenas’s gambling history appears to have come full circle.

Authorities say the poker operation at his Woodland Hills mansion ran from September 2021 through July 2022.

Ironically, Arenas later transformed that very mansion into a studio for his hit sports podcast, “Gil’s Arena,” which is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy, a company that promotes legal gambling. Launched in 2023 with co-host Josiah Johnson, the show has gained a massive following. Underdog Fantasy even extended its multi-year contract with Arenas in January 2025.

The show has grown into the largest digital basketball podcast in the U.S., pulling in an average of 275,000 viewers per episode and amassing over 500 million views on YouTube. However, Arenas’s arrest now places that partnership in jeopardy.

Underdog itself has been scrutinized for skirting gambling laws. It was fined $17.5 million in New York over alleged violations involving games deemed illegal by the state, and it recently pulled its pick’em games from California after the Attorney General’s Office declared them unlawful.

Arenas isn’t the only NBA figure under legal scrutiny over gambling activity. Marcus Morris was arrested this week and denied bond after allegedly writing $265,000 in bad checks at two Las Vegas casinos. Jontay Porter, meanwhile, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to wire fraud for leaking his own injury status to assist sports bettors in profiting off prop bets.

Malik Beasley and Terry Rozier are also subjects of ongoing investigations. Beasley allegedly had bets placed on him to underperform on rebounds, only to go on and exceed the line in question. Rozier, who was initially cleared by the NBA, is still under federal investigation after bets were placed on his unders at a Mississippi casino just before he exited a game due to injury.

As the list of gambling-related controversies within the NBA continues to grow, Arenas’s case underscores the increasing tension between the rise of legalized sports betting and the league’s integrity standards. For Arenas, what began as a career once filled with talent and flair now risks being remembered more for its legal battles and brushes with gambling’s darker side. 

By fLEXI tEAM