https://www.pokernews.com/news/2019/...lion-34814.htm

"Dennis Blieden 29, who won $1 million in the 2018 LAPC, has been charged by the FBI with embezzling $22 million from StyleHaul."

This guy was on some of the big games on LATB this year as well and definitely wasn't making money. I guess he dumped alot in big LA games and used the donkament win as a 'cover' to play the bigger games?

Is that Dennis the Menace from the 5-5 ante game on LATB?

No, this guy

This is pretty crazy. $22M embezzled from a company that size over 3 years is pretty impressive from a "how the hell didn't anyone notice" perspective.

I'm not very good at poker but I imagine I could hit a donkament if I freerolled a bunch of them. Maybe not 1st place in a major event, but I could final table something. Maybe get my first score on hendonmob!

I remember when he entered the 300k super high roller bowl and thinking that he was just a super degen with his WPT score.

Playing in ridiculous high buy-in and high profile tourneys is a good way to attract attention to yourself.

These L.A. home games must just be completely nuts. Like LATB on steroids(or blow to probably be more accurate).

I just played with him in the 1K PLO championship at Wynn in late June.

Absolutely crazy story, he's pretty f'ed

The online high stakes poker scene just took a hit to the chin

He played in nypokerking's pppoker club, he was dubbed the crypto millionaire by Adnan, I wonder if this will lead to adnans arrest for running an illegal club and stealing player funds.

Wasnt something similiar to this that lead to Molly's game getting raided? One of the players stole millions from others and lost it at the game. The players that won money from him had to pay it back. I wonder if this will be the case here.

"one of the most next-level strategies" ITT!


i feel like you are sitting on more specific information regarding who this player may be online. care to divulge screen name(s) and/or site(s) affected?

Hope he deeply enjoyed the years of spending. Because he'll be in for a longgg time. Probably didn't find much joy in it though. Them thoughts in the back of the mind.. And since he bought tons of crypto he better be in for a long time because it's unlikely the IT forensics teams can find it all.

Anyone know how these cases usually end when facing 200 years maximum? Plead down to... what? I just don't see how it can be justified to let him out ever unless there's a way to constantly monitor him to ensure he can't live off of hidden crypto

I always find it amazing how guys who are accused of this type of thing keep a high profile. You would think they would stay off the radar and not play poker on tv.

Yeah agreed. This is like Cyril the frenchman who went on the full tilt million dollar cash game back in the day.

Mouly 2.0

Craziest hand ever is a ridiculous stretch but lol the degeneracy.

"served as controller and vice president of accounting and finance"

It certainly says they lacked good institutional controls on things like audits...a common denominator on embezzlement tends to be the lack of control in the form of outside audits.

Had a former client that was a book-keeper for a large race track. Her haul was less than this case and occurred over a much longer time, so not all of it was even able to be prosecuted. What did her in was an overpayment of the track's tax obligation...the refund went to the corporate offices in a different State, which then prompted a large-scale audit of the Texas operations.

Even within our office, we had lacked a good accounting protocol which allowed for our finance manager to clear close to $100K across a year or two. She signed her house over to the firm in lieu of prosecution. I still disagree with the decision not to prosecute...but accepting the house and then flipping it at least got us most of what was stolen.

'...You get up two and a half million dollars, any ******* in the world knows what to do: you get a house with a 25 year roof, an indestructible Jap-economy ****box, you put the rest into the system at three to five percent to pay your taxes and that’s your base, get me? That’s your fortress of ****ing solitude...' the gambler

This company probably makes some more than those $22M

They did but from what I read, StyleHaul was acquired for ~$150-200M in 2014 (not sure what revenue was but guessing $30M range), then went downhill with multiple rounds of layoffs and eventually shut down a couple months ago. It didn't seem like there was so much $ that it would be easy to hide $22M especially when you are likely losing money every year.

For Michelle227, yes, definitely agree and that's a strange story about taking the house in lieu of prosecution haha.

Was hoping this wasn’t the case. ****

So who was this dude online?

wasn't Rosarito Beach where a bunch of Black Friday refugees ended up?

Wonder if he was writing players checks for online funds, or if it was all to settle up with agents from PPPoker clubs? You also have to think that he was washing the money from online poker to crypto or maybe he was just degening it off...I vote degen.

it says he could get up to 200 years! for this...

if hes found guilty is that all likely to stick and he gets maximum? i dunno much about court systems maybe the lawyers get them less?

It also has a link to this triple straddle hand w Oscar and Dan Smith which is pretty filthy.

https://youtu.be/S3zHgtcJmrA

Yes the most popular destination by far mostly due to being close to the border and LA/SD/Vegas. Along with being pretty cheap.