Gilbert Arenas, who played for teams including the Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic and Golden State Warriors, was arrested Wednesday
A former NBA All-star has been arrested alongside five others over a “high stakes” illegal poker ring at his Los Angeles mansion.
Gilbert Arenas, who played for teams including the Washington Wizards, Orlando Magic and Golden State Warriors, was arrested Wednesday and faces federal charges over the arrangement at his residence in Encino, California.
The 43-year-old is charged with one count of conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, one count of operating an illegal gambling business, and one count of making false statements to federal investigators.
He made his initial appearance and was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
Arenas was charged alongside five defendants, who included Yevgeni Gershman, a suspected high-level member of an Israeli transnational organized crime group, according to the California Attorney General’s office.
As long as people play cash,not credit, and no violence comes of anything, who really cares.
We can’t be bothered to lock up pedophiles though.
We can’t lock up all our job creators!
Fun fact (in the United States) if you have your friends over for a poker night and you bet money. You have broken the same laws!
Don’t go too hard on him until the facts are actually known.
I used to host home games at my house. They were quasi-legal because I didn’t take a rake and no one was allowed to tip the dealer, a dealer who wanted to break into the cardroom at a legit casino nearby. It wasn’t easy at the time to get into a cardroom because it’s so lucrative so a lot of these people were blackjack dealers who wanted a lateral move. This was right before and at the beginning of the “Poker Boom” characterized by people like Chris Moneymaker. I stopped soon after because so many other people were hosting the parties that I didn’t have to host to get my action.
BYOB and a few of us regulars would chip in for something like a 6ft sub sandwich or catering type nachos. I’d have a couple racks of soda and everyone was free to raid the fridge if they didn’t like the food. We often would tip the dealer $5-10 each at the end of the night, a big winner might have tipped $50 (this is the only reason it was quasi-legal and not actually legal). However, we were also playing $0.10/$0.25 no-limit holdem so a big big pot would be $100. Like that pot would happen maybe once every four sessions. None of us were rich. I would always stop someone from spending more than say $2-300 if I knew they were working class like me, got drunk and went on tilt.
These people are rich, they want a home game with catered food, free drinks, concierge service. They want that home game experience with high end tastes instead of going to California’s shitty cardrooms. I really doubt if dude was making any money from the whole thing. Thing is, California is crazy with their home gaming rules. I’m not even sure my game would have been tolerated.
Arenas “rented out an Encino mansion he owned for the purpose of hosting high-stakes illegal poker games,” the AG said in a press release, adding that at Arenas’ direction, Arthur Kats, 51, of West Hollywood, staged the mansion to host the games.
Kats also found co-conspirators to host the games, and collected rent from the co-conspirators on Arenas’ behalf, the release added.
So yeah, he was taking a rake
Then they better arrest every landlord, cuz it sounds like all he did was rent his house out from that description
Well yeah but he had better than BigK cola and yesterday’s party sub