Last year, "Spiderman" star Tobey Maguire and a number of other participants in regular high-stakes poker home games were sued by the clients of one of the games’ losers. That man, Bradley Ruderman, stole money from those clients in part to fund his poker habit. In May, those lawsuits were settled and Maguire, along with a number of other celebrities, avoided the headaches of a trial. This week, the pop culture website Celebuzz detailed how the games were organized and how Ruderman got involved.Using a 206-page transcript of a deposition taken in March after Ruderman was arrested for stealing tens of millions of dollars from clients of his hedge fund, Ruderman Capital Partners, Celebuzz recounted the tale of a wealthy businessman who enjoyed the excitement of poker and celebrities, but resorted to theft when paying his debts.
Ruderman got involved in the games in 2006 when he had a chance meeting with Rick Salomon of Paris Hilton sex tape fame. Salomon invited him to a party, where he met Molly Bloom, sister of former freestyle skiing world champion Jeremy Bloom. Molly Bloom made money organizing private, high-stakes poker games in the Los Angeles area, many of which involved members of the Hollywood elite. She asked Ruderman if he was interested in attending and he said yes.
Ruderman’s first game was at the home of Maguire. After that, he became a regular player in the games, usually attending about once every two weeks. Bloom would text him the details of the game, often letting him know what celebrities would be there. As has been previously reported, actor Matt Damon of "Rounders" fame, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, and "Home Alone" star Macaulay Culkin all played, as did "The Notebook" director Nick Cassavetes and “High Stakes Poker” host Gabe Kaplan.
As the deposition continued, Ruderman described the scene at the games. Often held at ritzy hotel suites, there were passwords required for entry and armed guards were present at times. Attractive women were on hand to serve drinks and give massages. All the while, Molly Bloom would keep records on how much money each player won and lost and made sure the game’s losers settled up within a few days. She also took a fee, amounting to over $6,000 per night.
“If you were a loser, you knew that you had lost and you knew that in the next couple of days, she would be in contact with you to write a check in an amount or amounts to the various winners of that game,” Ruderman said. “And usually what would happen is you couldn’t play in the next game until you made good on your debts for the prior game.”
A separate source told Celebuzz that one player even rented a room down the hall where he kept hookers and drugs. He would take occasional breaks to pay that room a visit, something that annoyed the other players, as it disrupted the game.
A typical buy-in to the No Limit Hold’em games was $50,000, although players could always rebuy. Ruderman said in the deposition that one player lost $300,000 one night and that Maguire was easily the best player in the games. One of Celebuzz’ sources said that Maguire (pictured) might have made as much as $1 million per month in the games for three years.For the most part, the players enjoyed the games. Ruderman said the atmosphere was comfortable and players liked being in a controlled environment, away from casino floors, with people they knew.
The problem for Ruderman was that he was the fish at the table, a big reason why he was invited to the games. He eventually realized how bad he was, but unfortunately didn’t have the money to fund his awful play. Thus, he used more than $5.2 million of his clients’ money to pay his poker debts. This is in addition to tens of millions of dollars (total figures ranging from $25 million to $44 million have been reported) he stole from his hedge fund clients through a Ponzi scheme.
“I traded securities every single day,” he testified. “I tried to make clients money. As it turned out, I didn’t do it every well and I misrepresented those performance figures to my clients.”
When asked if he literally took money from the fund, Ruderman replied, “That’s why I’m here [in jail] today.”
Even though Ruderman committed a crime in part to pay his gambling debts, it likely seems odd to many that these high-stakes poker games have gotten so much attention. Because the games may have technically been illegal and were unlicensed, Ruderman’s investors came to the determination that the games’ transactions were void and the sums won from Ruderman by Maguire and others were invalid.
Thus, 22 people sued Maguire, Cassavetes, Kaplan (pictured), Salomon, and others to recoup their losses. Read our original lawsuit article. In May, the cases were settled and the plaintiffs received a total of $1.75 million.In his deposition, Ruderman said that the subject of the games’ legality did come up at times. The players seemed to agree that home games were fine, but they were a bit uneasy about Bloom taking a cut. Ruderman said that poker pro Kenny Tran, New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, and billionaire businessman Alec Gores also attended the games.
Ruderman is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for two counts of wire fraud and two counts of investment adviser fraud. Molly Bloom has since moved to New York, where she organizes poker games for Wall Street hot shots.
