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

  From what Pete could see, all of this had been going on before they bought Ultimate Bet during the Barcelona conference—and had continued since.

  “They fucked us,” Pete said, as Brent and Angelo leafed through the pages for the hundredth time. “Whether they did it knowingly or not, they fucked us big-time. And they’re still holding that promissory note for around a hundred and thirty million dollars. We’re supposed to pay them a hundred and thirty million bucks for a company with this shit at its core.”

  Brent’s shoulders sagged. “This is going to cost us. But I’m not sure what we can do. We can’t go after them in court. I mean, what court? What jurisdiction? Certainly not the U.S. How do we deal with this, legally?”

  Pete shook his head. He had given this a lot of thought. “I don’t think we deal with this in court, at least not initially. I think we handle this old-school.”

  Brent looked at him. Angelo started to fidget in his chair.

  “What do you mean, old-school?”

  Pete grinned. “You remember Hell Week, back at SAE?”

  “Of course.”

  “I think it’s time we bring Hell Week to Central America.”

  And then Brent was grinning too. Angelo looked at both of them, then forced a grin as well, although he had no idea what the hell they were talking about. Angelo couldn’t possibly understand—but those cheating fuckers at Ultimate Bet were about to get a taste of all-American fraternity life, SAE-style.

  CHAPTER 31

  The limousine was pitch-black, its bulletproof windows tinted so dark they were like glassy bat eyes, flashing intermittently as the bright slice of moon blinked down through gaps in the thick jungle overhang. The road was so narrow, the curves so steep, that at times the long, sleek car seemed to be tilting almost ninety degrees from horizontal; the four overweight men jammed together in the leather-lined, sectioned-off backseat were sweating through their tailored suits, emitting gasps of fear whenever the car tilted a little too precariously toward a steep ravine or came a little too close to a jagged rock face.

  The men weren’t sweating just because of the treacherous road. The air-conditioning in the car had been turned off, which was particularly torturous because they were presently deep in the hills outside of San José, and it was weeks into the region’s humid season. Not that Costa Rica had a season that wasn’t humid, but these men were not used to the tropics, or the third world. They had flown in from London, Vancouver, and Portland. They were businessmen, middle-aged, two with law degrees. And they had fully expected a modern hotel, a glass-walled conference room, maybe a tray filled with Starbucks in Styrofoam cups.

  Instead, they had been met at the airport by three burly security men, wearing obviously visible sidearms right out in the open. They had been ushered into the back of the limo and driven directly into the jungle.

  Two hours had gone by like that, the limo twisting up and down the narrow road, and the men were about ready to break down. Thankfully, it was only another ten minutes before the car finally slowed to a stop, angling into a dirt clearing in front of what appeared to be a single-story wooden shed. Through the heavily tinted windows, it was hard to make out much about the decrepit building, but there were obvious holes in the thatched roof, and there was a pair of mangy-looking dogs tied up near what appeared to be an outhouse next door.

  “Christ,” one of the men uttered. The three armed security guards didn’t respond. One remained behind the wheel, the engine running, while the other two came around the car and opened the passenger doors.

  The suited men stumbled out into the thick jungle air, stretching their legs. One of them looked like he was going to throw up, but he managed to contain himself. Then a security guard pulled a long metal wand out of his jacket pocket.

  “Strip down to your underwear,” he said gruffly.

  One of the men laughed. The guard stared at him with narrow eyes. He didn’t put his hand on his holster, but his fingers twitched in that direction. The businessman stopped laughing, then glanced at one of his colleagues.

  “Are you serious?” the businessman asked. “Absolutely not. We will do no such thing.”

  “You strip, or there’s no meeting. And you can find your own way back to the airport.”

  The second security guard began to head back toward the car. The businessmen looked at one another. One of them cursed.

  Then, slowly, they started to undress.

  It took a full five minutes for the heavyset men to get down to their underwear, each suit piled up on the dirt in front of them. They stood there with pasty flesh, boxer shorts and white Hanes briefs, beads of sweat rolling like marbles down trembling legs.

  The guard stepped forward and began waving the wand over each man, then over the piles of clothes. None of the men noticed that the wand was actually a television remote control affixed to a car antenna, or that there were no buttons, lights, or batteries involved. They just waited, terrified and sweating, for him to finish.

  When he was done, he gestured for them to head into the shed. The men looked from him to their clothes.

  “Like this?” one of them asked. “Can’t we get dressed?”

  The guard shook his head. “The boss says you guys go in like this.”

  Cursing even louder, the four businessmen, still in their underwear, hurried toward the shed door.

  It wasn’t until the men were back in the car, still buttoning and zipping up their clothes as they headed back down the jungle road, that Pete and his negotiating team, still in the dank, stark confines of the shed, which reeked of goat dung and rotting produce, let themselves burst into hysterical laughter. Pete actually fell to the dirt floor, he was laughing so hard, and it was a good few minutes before he finally caught his breath.

  The plan had worked perfectly. Those businessmen were worth tens of millions of dollars, were at the top echelons of what was formerly a publicly traded company—and there they were, in their freaking underwear, agreeing to anything and everything Pete and his team put forward. Pete had accused them of stealing $25 million, then demanded that they cancel the $130 million debt, in exchange for a simple $1.5 million payment. Furthermore, he told them he fully expected a renegotiation of their profit-sharing ratio, and that he intended to pay back whatever he could that had been stolen from players over the past half decade.

  The businessmen had agreed to every last demand. Pete couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. He wasn’t just a master at marketing; if his time as SAE president had taught him anything, it was how to pull off a damn good fraternity hazing.

  CHAPTER 32

  APRIL 15, 2011

  It was a few minutes after 9 A.M. on a Friday, one of those perfect April mornings that makes living in Costa Rica worth it, despite all the negatives. Any argument Brandi could make about third-world conditions, the traffic or the smog or the power outages—none of it had any resonance on a morning like this, against that sun, that breeze, the smiles on every face in the office. Pete was the only one who seemed to be working at his desk in his cubicle, while everyone else was already making plans for the beach; but really, he was thinking more about playing golf that afternoon with Brent than he was about poker revenues and television buys. His mind was already on a golf course, his eyes following an imaginary white ball as it arced across the aquamarine tropical sky. He didn’t even hear the phone ringing on his desk until an accountant who happened to be walking by, tapped his shoulder and pointed at the receiver.

  The voice on the other end of the line barely cut into his daydream. It was one of his advertising contacts, a guy who was part owner of a poker magazine.

  “Pete, I think you’re getting hacked.”

  The man’s voice sounded pretty anxious, but Pete knew it wouldn’t be more than a minor irritation. Over the previous few months, as the art of hacking had become more in vogue, they’d dealt with a handful of hack attempts, and usually it was just some kid in Russia or China taking a shot at their software for no rea
son other than boredom.

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Pete responded, watching that spinning golf ball in his head. “I’ll get someone to take a look at it—”

  “I think you better check it out for yourself,” the magazine owner said, and then he abruptly hung up.

  Pete sat up in his chair. He was still sure it was nothing—the business had been going so well since they’d dealt with the Ultimate Bet scandal and resumed building their player base until it was almost as high as it had ever been—but the tone of his contact’s voice had gone from anxious to something far less identifiable. He put the receiver back on its base, then powered up his computer. A second later he typed in the address for AbsolutePoker.com.

  And his heart nearly stopped in his chest. His entire screen was taken up by the official seal of the United States Department of Justice. Pete stared at the big eagle holding the branch, at the official-looking titles, at the red border, and then he started to comprehend the words.

  This site has been seized . . .

  Pete’s first thought was, Shit, this is a serious hack. And then a much darker thought crossed his mind. He quickly typed in the domain name for PokerStars, their main competitor who had stayed in the U.S. market. A second later he was staring at the same DOJ seal, the same horrific words:

  This site has been seized . . .

  He quickly typed in the address for Full Tilt Poker, the other major poker site that had U.S. customers.

  This site has been seized . . .

  His next thought was, What are the chances that the three biggest poker websites in the U.S. are getting hacked at the same time? And then he closed his eyes. He knew it was impossible. It hit him right then.

  This was real.

  This was it.

  “Everyone!” he shouted, his voice reverberating off the cubicle walls. “Get on your computers. Go to the site.”

  There was a pause, and then a handful of gasps. The sound ran like an infection from cubicle to cubicle, as everyone else in the office went to the site as well. Then he heard someone cursing—followed by the sound of a phone crashing into a wall. Without thinking, Pete brought his hand up in the air, turned it into a fist. And before he could even comprehend what he was doing, he crashed it down against his keyboard, again and again. The plastic shattered, keys raining across his desk.

  Through all of the scandals, the cheating, the RCMP raiding Vancouver, everything, it had never really been it. Even before he had been with the company—the Caribbean bank failures, Shane’s addiction, Scott’s car crash, the UIGEA—it had never been it.

  But in that split second, Pete knew that it was over.

  After Vancouver, his wife had asked him, When do you quit? And he’d answered, When it’s no longer a gray area. That’s when we get out.

  In that moment, Pete knew—it was no longer gray. It was black-and-white, and it was time to get out.

  Brent had one hand on the steering wheel, the other tapping at the controls of the MP3 player built into his dash. He was trying to find just the right music for the short drive to the office. He was a little late, but he didn’t think anyone would care. Then again, he was pretty much the boss now—well, him, Pete, and a few others. They’d been sharing responsibilities since Scott and Hilt had left, and everything was going so well, nobody would have even cared if he’d taken the entire day off—turn the afternoon of golf he’d planned with his friends into a three-day weekend. Golf, beach, hanging out with his wife and two kids—Christ, now it was two kids, two amazing little balls of energy, one five, the other a little over one—crazy to even think about.

  And then his cell phone was ringing. He abandoned the MP3 controls and put the speaker to his ear.

  To his surprise, it was his lawyer.

  “Brent, you need to get to the office right away, and call me as soon as you get there.”

  Brent raised his eyebrows, because he’d never heard his lawyer sound like that.

  “Why? What is it? Did someone die?”

  “We just got a fax from New York. It’s an indictment. And your name is on it.”

  It felt like the universe was crashing down around him. He needed to get off the road, immediately. He was still a good ten minutes from the office, but the beach traffic was snarling in front of him. He yanked the wheel to the right, driving into the parking lot of a gas station, then slammed on the brake.

  “What do you mean, indictment? Who’s indicting who?”

  “The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, with the help of the whole DOJ. They’ve shut down all the sites, and they’re bringing up ten of the principals on charges.”

  “Wait, what? What charges?” Brent’s voice was little more than a croak, echoing around the car, blending with the noise from the traffic crawling past the gas station. “Which principals?”

  “The charges range from operating an illegal gambling business to bank fraud to money laundering.”

  Money laundering. Bank fraud. The words reverberated in Brent’s head. This wasn’t about whether poker was a game of skill or risk. These were real, criminal charges. These were the kind of charges they threw at actual criminals.

  “Who does the indictment name?”

  “It looks like they picked two people from each of the big three poker companies that continued to operate in the U.S. after UIGEA, and a payment processor. Two from PokerStars, two from Full Tilt, and two from Absolute Poker. From Absolute Poker, they picked you—and your brother.”

  Brent lowered his head to the steering wheel.

  “It gets worse,” the lawyer continued, his voice seeming so damn far away. “They’ve seized all the company funds they could get their hands on. Seized all the domain names. The payment processors—it looks like they’re just disappearing, a lot of them taking players’ money with them . . .”

  Brent was barely listening. His eyes were welling up with tears.

  Money laundering.

  Bank fraud.

  “This is what it looks like,” he whispered to himself, “when everything comes crashing down . . .”

  Some people just knew how to live.

  Scott put his feet up on the wooden banister, staring out over the white-sand beach, watching the soft waves lapping at the seashells. The carved-driftwood balcony of the small, elegant restaurant at the five-star hotel where he was staying was crowded—mostly well-dressed tourists finishing up breakfast, planning their day on an island that could only be properly described as a true paradise—but Scott had found a nice, quiet corner in which to relax by himself. His girlfriend was still up in the room, sleeping off a night of dancing in the hotel bar. Soon Scott would rejoin her, and they would hit the beach—or not; there was a nice big Jacuzzi in their suite, overlooking those same soft waves. Hell, he thought to himself, he could stay in that suite all day. He could stay on this beautiful island forever.

  And then he felt a trembling against his thigh—his cell phone, jammed into the side pocket of his bathing suit, on vibrate mode. He thought about ignoring it, but decided it could only be good news. It was that kind of a morning.

  He got the phone free and placed it against his ear. To his surprise, it was Hilt on the other end of the line. As far as he knew, Hilt was in Panama, setting up his new home. Now that they were no longer involved in the company, they had gone off in different directions. Hilt had landed in Panama City and was working on new business ventures, using that fierce brain of his to begin his empire-building anew. Scott was still searching, but the wonderful island of Antigua had seemed as good a place as any to start.

  “Hey, buddy,” Scott said, watching a seagull hop just out of reach of the waterline, bouncing on legs the thickness of twigs. “You should get your ass over here, this place is awesome—”

  “Scott, stop and listen. The site was just shut down by the Department of Justice. The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan filed an indictment against you and Brent.”

  Scott laughed. “April Fools’, right? Y
ou’re a bit late, fucker. It’s the fifteenth—”

  “This isn’t a joke. I’m e-mailing you the indictment right now. It’s gonna take you an hour to read through the whole thing, but they’re trying to get you on running an illegal gambling venture, bank fraud, money laundering, and a bunch of other shit. It’s coming from New York, because of their broad gambling laws—but Scott, this is a real indictment, with real jail time at the end. The lawyers I’ve talked to said you could be facing a lot of years—”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Scott, listen to me! You and Brent were just indicted.”

  Scott blinked. This couldn’t be happening now. So many years had passed, so many hurdles had been overcome—why was this happening now?

  “Why me? I’m not even there anymore. Brent’s been dealing with those fucking processors—but why is my name there?”

  Hilt didn’t answer. The blood was rushing through Scott’s head. He couldn’t believe what Hilt was saying. He’d never been charged with anything more than a traffic ticket in his life. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d lived pretty hard, he’d gone through some crazy shit—but in his mind, he hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “This is insane. Hilt, what should I do?”

  Hilt still didn’t say anything. Scott knew what his friend was thinking. It could have been any one of them named in there. It felt so arbitrary and unfair. The U.S. government could have addressed the business in so many other ways. It could have come up with regulation, it could have demanded taxes, it could have even filed a cease and desist. But it had gone right for the jugular.

  Still holding the phone, Scott stood up from his chair. He found himself stumbling back from the banister, toward the small tiki bar in the corner of the restaurant’s balcony. When he got there, he ignored the smiling bartender and pointed toward a bottle of tequila on a low counter behind the man.