A California professional poker player pleaded guilty this week to running an illegal bookmaking operation and money laundering.
Damien LeForbes filed the plea agreement in federal court on Monday. Signed in June, the agreement states that LeForbes took millions of dollars from bettors over three years and wagered $148 million obtained from illegal bookmaking at “Casino A” from Jan. 2022 through Dec. 15, 2023.
LeForbes accepted cash, checks, and payments through cryptocurrency wallets. He also recruited casino hosts from Resorts World Las Vegas to help operate what the court document called “the LeForbes Gambling Business.”
LeForbes faces up to 15 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $500,000 fine.
LeForbes is the third illegal bookmaker this year to plead guilty to similar charges. One of those bookmakers was Matthew Bowyer, who accepted wagers from Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara.
Ties to Resorts World
Bowyer, also from California, bet money obtained from Mizuhara and 700 other individuals at Resorts World Las Vegas, according to his plea agreement filed earlier this month.
The court document states that LeForbes “executed at least 17 personal or cashier’s checks to Casino A, totaling at least $9,105,000” from a bank account used in the gambling operation. He also paid Casino A at least $2.8 million in cash.
Casino A is never defined in LeForbes’ plea agreement, but the Nevada Current reported that LeForbes lost $12.8 million at Resorts World in nearly four dozen trips there, with the casino turnin over a $2.5 million bad check written by LeForbes to the Clark County District Attorney earlier this year. No charges for the bad check have been filed.
Bad culture
The Nevada Gaming Control Board filed a disciplinary complaint against Resorts World Las Vegas earlier this month, alleging that the hotel’s executives created a “culture that welcomed certain individuals with suspected or actual ties to illegal bookmaking, histories of federal convictions related to illegal gambling, and ties to organized crime.”
Bowyer was named as one of the illegal bookmakers in the complaint. Edwin Ting, who was federally convicted of illegal gambling and had ties to organized crime, and Chad Iwamoto, who was convicted for transmitting wagering information and failing to file monthly tax returns for wages, were two other felons named in the complaint.
The complaint also cites an unnamed individual “suspected of being an illegal bookmaker.”
Sentences upcoming
While no sentencing date has been set for LeForbes, Bowyer is scheduled to be sentenced in February for his five-year illegal bookmaking operation that led to more than $4 million in unreported income in 2022.
Mizuhara, who had access to Ohtani’s bank accounts, defrauded his friend for nearly $17 million needed to pay off gambling debts to Bowyer and others. Mizuhara will be sentenced on Oct. 25.
The third illegal bookmaking operation involved Wayne Nix, a former Major League Baseball player with ties to former MGM and Resorts World executive Scott Sibella. Nix is scheduled to be sentenced next month.
