- Poker professional sentenced for multi-million-dollar sports activities betting rip-off
- Zeidman misled traders with claims of insider sports activities data
- Homeland Safety uncovered long-running fraudulent handicapping scheme
WSOP bracelet winner Cory Zeidman has been sentenced to 46 months in federal jail for conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as first reported by PokerNews. He has additionally been ordered to pay $3.7 million in restitution to his victims.
Cory Zeidman, seen right here celebrating his 2015 Coco Poker Open win, flashes the hand that when made him infamous for slow-rolling Jennifer Harman with a straight flush on the 2005 WSOP Foremost Occasion. (Picture: Seminole Coconut Creek)
The veteran poker participant, 62, pleaded responsible in a federal courtroom in New York final December to defrauding clients in his sports activities handicapping enterprise.
From 2004 to 2020, Zeidman and his co-defendants falsely claimed to have “insider information” on sports activities occasions – together with “privileged” details about participant accidents, “soiled referees,” and “fastened” video games – when none such existed.
They collected round $25 million in “exorbitant” charges from clients for offering data that “was both fictitious or obtained from an web search,” in accordance with prosecutors.
‘No-Danger Proposition’
The group used names designed to sound like official funding corporations, reminiscent of “Gordon Howard International” and “Ray Palmer Group,” and marketed their providers on nationwide radio.
Potential traders had been informed the group had unique ideas from medical doctors about participant accidents and briefings from tv executives on supposedly predetermined sport outcomes – data they claimed made sports activities betting a “low or no-risk proposition,” in accordance with courtroom paperwork.
Zeidman was arrested Could 25, 2022 in Florida and initially protested his innocence. In a PokerNews interview, he claimed authorities “took all my cash they usually appear upset that I gained’t plead to issues I haven’t executed.”
“Within the phrases of [German philosopher Friedrich] Nietzsche, ‘All the things the state says is a lie and every little thing it has it has stolen,’” he proclaimed.
However in accordance with his victims — who alerted Homeland Safety to his scheme — it was Zeidman who was doing the mendacity and stealing. That’s a far cry from his PokerNews self-description as “a person with the best stage of morals and integrity.”
‘Outright Lies’
“Sports activities bettors sought Cory Zeidman’s recommendation earlier than playing their cash — but it surely was Zeidman himself who was scoring large by way of his misleading practices, outright lies, and high-pressure techniques that exploited unsuspecting shoppers,” particular agent Charles Walker of Homeland Safety in New York stated in a information launch that accompanied Zeidman’s arrest.
Based on the Hendon Mob database, Zeidman has collected almost $700,000 in gross match winnings over a 25-year poker profession. He captured his WSOP title in 2012 in seven-card stud. Earlier than that, he was maybe greatest identified for allegedly slow-rolling Jennifer Harman with a straight flush towards her full home on the 2005 WSOP Foremost Occasion.
