Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire--and How It All Came Crashing Down . . .

by Ben Mezrich

  DEDICATION

  For my dad, who inspired me to follow my dreams, and for Arya and Asher, who make me smile every single day

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Straight Flush is a dramatic narrative account based on multiple interviews, numerous sources, and thousands of pages of court documents. In some places, details of settings and descriptions have been changed to protect identities, and certain names, characterizations, and descriptions have been altered to protect privacy. In some instances I employ the technique of re-created dialogue, based on the recollections of interviewees, especially in scenes taking place more than a decade ago.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue: The Aftermath

  Photo Appendix

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Ben Mezrich

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  DECEMBER 19, 2011

  JUAN SANTAMARÍA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA

  Ten minutes before 5 A.M., a gray-on-gray sky was pregnant with the remnants of a passing storm, a thick canopy of clouds marred by occasional daggers of tropical blue and orange—and suddenly seven years disintegrated in a flash of reflected sunlight across the spinning glass of a revolving door.

  Brent Beckley stepped through the threshold of the Central American country’s main airport and into the poorly air-conditioned terminal. A little over six feet tall, with boyish features, a square jaw, and blondish-brown hair cut short over a wide, boxy forehead, Brent was moving fast, his five-hundred-dollar Italian-leather shoes clicking against the shiny linoleum floor. He was wearing a conservative dark blue suit with matching tie; there was a briefcase in his right hand and a heavy winter coat thrown over his left shoulder. Anyone looking his way might have assumed he was just another young, eager expat businessman on his way to an important meeting up north; business-clad Americans strolling through Santamaría International were a common sight, symbolic of the expat community that had grown exponentially in the near decade since Brent had first arrived in the tropical country.

  But the truth was, Brent Beckley was not on his way to a business meeting. In fact, he was quite possibly on his way to a jail cell. And the journey from where he’d started to where he was going was anything but common. He looked calm, cool, collected—shoulders back, head up—but on the inside he was terrified. He could feel the sweat running down the skin above his spine, and it required all his willpower to keep his knees from buckling, his body moving forward.

  Ten feet from the blue-rope labyrinth that led through to Immigration and Security, Brent spotted a man strolling determinedly toward him and slowed his gait. At first glance, the man didn’t look like a spy: thin, angular, with narrow cheeks, a sharp triangular nose, long legs lost in the folds of khaki pants, spindly arms jutting out past the cuffs of a white button-down shirt. The man was smiling, having recognized Brent immediately, though the two had never met. Brent tried to smile back, but the fear was playing havoc with the neurons that controlled the muscles of his face.

  Brent was barely thirty years old, a small-town kid from backwoods Montana, a former frat boy who’d spent most of his adult life working for what he considered to be an Internet company; he’d certainly never expected to find himself rendezvousing in a tropical airport with a smiling spy.

  Then again, the man wasn’t necessarily a spy. From what Brent remembered from the letter he’d received the week before, detailing how the meeting would go down, the man’s official title was some sort of “liaison” with the U.S. State Department, based out of the embassy in San José. And up close, even despite the sharp contours of his face, he looked much more like a kindly accountant than a menacing secret operative.

  But if Brent had learned anything over the past seven years, it was that there were very few things in life that were actually black or white; most things tended to be a mix of both.

  “Good morning, Mr. Beckley,” the man said as he intercepted Brent a few feet from the entrance to the maze of blue rope. “My name is David Foster. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Brent shook the man’s hand, trying to think of a response. When none was forthcoming, Foster extended his other hand, offering two documents. The first was instantly familiar: Brent’s U.S. passport—the same passport he had turned over to the State Department three days earlier. Glancing at the document, Brent felt his mouth go dry. He could see, even without looking closely, that someone had punched three holes through the center of the cover. Each dark circle tore at the pit of Brent’s stomach. There was something so permanent and real about the sight of that passport; its mutilation seemed like such a malevolent and unnecessary act.

  A week earlier, when Brent had first made the decision to turn himself in, the U.S. Embassy had requested a copy of his passport. Brent had been happy to accommodate, offering them the original document so they could copy it themselves; they had promptly confiscated it. Now he could see the result.

  It seemed to be just another step in a deceptive game. Brent had already agreed to surrender, and he was in the process of moving his family to the United States—yet even that wasn’t good enough.

  Foster appeared to read Brent’s thoughts and quickly shifted the invalidated passport to the side, revealing the second document in his hand: a thin, similar-looking passport, this one with its cover still intact. Brent took both documents from the man, inspecting the second, smaller booklet—and saw that it was dated for a single day’s use. Brent was still free to travel like any other American citizen—for the next twenty-four hours.

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Brent finally shrugged, shoving the two passports into his suit pocket.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Foster’s expression turned soft, and he jerked his head toward the blue ropes behind him.

  “We’ve got an hour to kill before your flight. You want to get a cup of coffee?”

  It wasn’t quite what Brent had expected—but again, none of this could have been anticipated. He nodded and followed the thin man toward Immigration.

  It was the fastest Brent had ever moved through the Costa Rican airport; usually, security took forever, especially for young Americans like him. In Brent’s experience, some of the native immigration officers seemed to take a special pleasure in hassling young American men traveling to and from the States. Brent assumed it had to do with the massive
inequities between the two cultures; to the average Costa Rican, Americans were rich, entitled, and usually obnoxious. From what Brent had seen of the mobs of northerners who kept the local tourist economy alive—usually large groups of men who spent mornings splayed out across the pristine beaches like bleating, bloated, bleached, and beached marine animals, and evenings carousing through the legal brothels that put red-light districts around the world to shame—well, maybe the immigration officers weren’t that far off. At the moment, Brent could only marvel as he was towed through Immigration and Security at a near-Olympic pace; Foster seemed to know everyone who worked at the airport, and even more helpful, the man’s Spanish was impeccable. He spoke like a native—though from what Brent could piece together, it appeared that Costa Rica was just one stop on a colorful, government-sponsored road trip that had extended from a military academy in Virginia, through a five-year stint in Iraq, to a half dozen embassies across South and Central America. Even if Foster wasn’t a spy, he’d certainly lived like one. Yet by the time Brent lowered himself onto a stool in a quiet corner of a dingy coffee shop—just beyond the last security checkpoint before the waiting area for Continental Airlines, the carrier that would take him out of his adopted home, possibly forever—he felt as comfortable with the man as one could possibly be, under the circumstances. Foster wasn’t a bad guy, and he wasn’t the enemy. He just worked for them.

  Foster ordered for both of them, making small talk as the uniformed waitress brought them Styrofoam cups filled with tar-black coffee. The first sip put strength into Brent’s knees and warmed his throat enough to make the words come a little easier.

  “This is just so crazy,” he said, the most words he’d strung together since he’d stepped into the airport. “I’m not even sure what I’m doing here.”

  Foster smiled, sipping his coffee. “Getting on a plane to New Jersey.”

  Brent must have given him a look, because Foster laughed.

  “Kid, it really does help to keep things simple in your head. Take it one step at a time. Right now, you’re drinking a shit cup of coffee in a shit coffee shop. An hour from now, you’ll be boarding a 737 to Newark. Real simple, like that.”

  Brent nodded. The guy was probably right. Keep his thoughts simple, keep focused on the moment, the little picture—because when he let his mind go after the big picture, well, things got really dark and confusing.

  “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

  Foster shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I don’t understand why they want you either. But that’s not my job.”

  It was good to hear, but Brent couldn’t help finishing the man’s thought: Foster’s job wasn’t to understand why Brent was being prosecuted; it was to facilitate the situation. Or more bluntly, make sure Brent got on that airplane. Brent couldn’t help wondering what Foster would do if he suddenly changed his mind—just turned and headed for the airport exit. Would Foster try to stop him?

  Brent immediately chided himself. He was letting his fear get to him. He’d already made the decision. The wheels were in motion.

  But still.

  “I’ll probably get some points for surrendering. I mean, I could just stay here in Costa Rica, right?”

  He’d spoken to enough lawyers to know that technically, for the moment anyway, he was correct. One of the key points for extradition was that the crime you were accused of committing had to be illegal in both jurisdictions. As far as he—or his lawyers—could tell, what he’d done, what he was accused of doing, was legal in Costa Rica. Hell, it was legal pretty much everywhere in the world—except for the United States. And even there—well, he and his legal team still weren’t entirely clear.

  “Maybe,” Foster agreed, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, we probably couldn’t have extradited you. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t get you.”

  Brent looked at him. There was a glint in Foster’s eyes as the thin “liaison” leaned close, over the table.

  “When we really want somebody, we work with our friends, in whatever country we happen to be. A few phone calls, a little back-and-forth, tit for tat. We get them to cancel your immigration status, and next thing you know, you’re being deported. Guess where?”

  Foster was still smiling, but his thin features didn’t seem quite as amiable as before. Brent stifled a shiver.

  “Put a bag over my head, hit me with a truncheon, shove me into the trunk of a car?”

  Foster laughed. “Come on, kid. You’ve been in Central America too long. This is the U.S. government you’re talking about. We’re civilized.”

  Brent pretended to ease back against his stool, but his muscles were tense, his nerves once again feeding rubber into his knees. When the U.S. government wanted to lock someone up, they didn’t need black bags, truncheons, and trunks of cars. They simply passed a law to make whatever their target was doing illegal. Then they punched holes in his passport.

  Brent exhaled, taking a deep drink from his coffee.

  “So I guess I’m doing the right thing. It’s just . . . well, this wasn’t how this was supposed to have gone down.”

  Foster shrugged again. He’d heard the line before, probably many times. The thing was, in Brent’s case, it was more than a cliché. Seven years earlier, when he’d strolled through this very airport for the first time—a kid barely out of college, on his way to join four of his best friends chasing a dream that at the time seemed so real and possible—it had felt like the beginning of a grand, exotic adventure. And in many ways, those seven years had been just that—grand, exotic, exciting, and at times unbelievably profitable. Brent and his friends had built something amazing.

  And then, just like that, in a flash as quick and blinding as sunlight on a glass pane, it had all come crashing down.

  “Yeah,” Brent said, and sighed, crumpling his now empty Styrofoam cup in the palm of his hand, “maybe we were stupid, but none of us pictured it ending like this.”

  Two hours later, Brent toyed with the recline lever of his first-class aisle seat, trying and failing to find a setting that might relieve the dull ache that had settled into his bones once the narrow-bodied Continental 737 had reached its cruising altitude. He knew his efforts were futile; his discomfort had nothing to do with the seat, or the fact that even in first class, his legs were pretzeled together. His body hurt because now that he was alone in the confines of the airplane, his mind couldn’t help whirling forward, to what was coming. And even at his most optimistic, Brent knew that it was going to be one hell of a hard landing.

  He desperately wanted a drink, but alcohol would be a bad idea. His head needed to be clear. Even his seat was a source of mild anxiety—he had purchased a ticket in coach, but someone had shifted him to first class, front row, aisle. He wasn’t sure if federal agents were going to get on the plane and take him off in handcuffs or if they’d let him walk through the Jetway under his own power. Either way, the gnawing thought of what was awaiting him would make this the longest flight of his life.

  As the plane began to jerk and jag through a spot of mild turbulence, Brent shut his eyes, forcing his head back against the faux-leather headrest. Eyes closed, he was not surprised to immediately picture his wife and two young sons; at that moment they were probably beginning the process of setting up residency in Salt Lake City, where he planned to eventually join them. That little family was, without question, the most treasured part of his life. They were the reason he was on that 737. The reason he’d surrendered—even though in the minds of some of his friends, surrendering was akin to giving up without a fight.

  The bottom line was, Brent’s wife was Colombian, his kids Costa Rican; if he was going to have any chance of giving them a life in the United States, of having his kids become full citizens like their father—he was going to have to make a deal.

  And in a way, that had made his decision easier. There had been other options—and not just staying in Costa Rica. His older brother—stepbrother, technically, whom Brent idolized and respected more
than anyone else on earth—had gone a very different route. Scott didn’t like to use the word fugitive because, in truth, he wasn’t running, nor was he exactly hiding—the U.S. government just couldn’t get him as long as he stayed within the borders of the tiny Caribbean island he now called home. But for Brent, returning to the States had always been the endgame; the government’s offer to assist in his family’s relocation had tipped the scales, and despite the anxiety Brent felt about his own future, at least for his family, he was pretty sure he was doing the right thing.

  For the moment, he did his best to cling to that minor solace. He had to believe that whatever they did to him, he had made the best decision for his family. He kept his eyes closed, that thought firmly in place, until the plane finally began its descent into Newark.

  It wasn’t until he heard the quiet rumble of the Jetway moving into place that he finally opened his eyes. He watched the flight attendant going to work on the door; a few clicks and a grunt later, the attendant stepped back, revealing the orange-lit tunnel stretching forward into the depths of Newark International Airport.

  Brent gave it a full thirty seconds before he decided it was okay for him to be just another passenger, at least for a little while longer. He retrieved his briefcase and overcoat, then headed for the Jetway.

  It wasn’t until he’d reached the end of the long, angled tunnel that he saw the immigration officers. He quickly counted six of them, all in uniform—and every one armed. Nobody had a gun drawn, but even so, the sight of those leather holsters, pitched high on each officer’s hip—it was enough to take Brent’s breath away. He did his best not to stumble as he made it the last few steps to the end of the Jetway.