A World Poker Tour champion will spend greater than six years behind bars for embezzling $22 million from his former employer.
Dennis Blieden, who gained the 2018 WPT LA Poker Classic primary occasion for $1,00,000, was sentenced to 79 months in federal jail by a U.S. District Court choose in Central California. He may also be compelled to pay $22.7 million in restitution.
Blieden, 31, pled responsible in November 2019 to at least one depend of wire fraud and identification theft as a part of a plea deal. He was initially going through 11 counts of wire fraud, one depend of identification theft and two counts of forfeiture. Those prices may land him as much as 200 years in jail, however after the plea deal, he was going through a most of twenty-two years behind bars.
The Cincinnati native served because the controller and vp of accounting and finance for StyleHaul, a Los Angeles-based digital advertising and marketing firm that represented “influencers” on YouTube and Instagram. He had management of the corporate’s funds and used $22 million to finance his high-stakes playing.
During his tenure, Blieden falsified wire transfers from Western Union to make it appear to be the cash was getting used to pay purchasers, however as a substitute, he was preserving the cash for himself.
The DOJ mentioned that Blieden wrote $1.2 million in private checks to different poker gamers, used $1.1 million to repay bank cards and spent one other $8.4 million shopping for cryptocurrency. The remainder of it was used for his private expenditures, together with high-stakes poker. The cryptocurrency he bought had appreciated, however not sufficient to repay his money owed to the corporate.
An inner investigation by the corporate in March of 2019 led to the uncovering of Blieden’s actions. He was indicted in Las Vegas later that yr and extradited to Southern California. Blieden stole the cash over a number of years earlier than finally leaving the corporate in 2018.
Even although he earned a seven-figure rating along with his WPT victory in 2018, he was already buried in debt from prior playing endeavors and wasn’t even near paying again the money owed he owed to the corporate. He embezzled $15 million in 2017, based on an inner StyleHaul memo.
The feds mentioned that on certainly one of his playing journeys to Las Vegas, he misplaced $3 million on slot machines alone. It was his playing downside coupled along with his want to grow to be a profitable poker professional that drove him deeper into the opening, which he referenced in a 15-page pre-sentencing letter that Blieden wrote to Judge Andre Birotte Jr.
“I was chasing my debt, but also attempting to keep up with a lifestyle that was a lie,” wrote Blieden.
He went on to say that following his WPT victory, he was “outwardly validated within the poker community” and that he “did everything [he] could to keep that reputation alive.” He additionally admitted to having an issue with methamphetamines in his letter.
Prosecutors really useful locking up Blieden for 8.5 years, however Birotte shaved practically two years off that along with his sentencing.