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

  The elevator doors whooshed open, and Scott nearly tumbled out into a narrow hallway, with thick carpeting and sconces on the walls. He caught sight of Hilt immediately, at the entrance to the small, windowless conference room, standing with six other people; most looked like lawyers, in suits and ties, carrying briefcases—but right next to Hilt was Greg Pierson, the head and founder of Ultimate Bet.

  At the sight of Hilt and Greg, Scott felt his shoulders rise, if only an inch or two—because even in the midst of all the chaos, terror, and misery of the moment, there might just be a silver lining.

  Back when Scott was struggling to find a way to get Absolute Poker to the next level, he’d called on Greg for advice; now, with the industry imploding and the ground reeling beneath their feet, Greg had contacted him.

  Ultimate Bet, like Party Poker, was a public company. By then, it had grown to be one of the biggest in the business—but like Absolute Poker, most of its customers lived in the States. If it shut down that part of its operation, Ultimate Bet wouldn’t survive. Greg was in a real bind; he couldn’t ignore the UIGEA, but if he responded the way Party Poker and the rest of the public companies had, it would be corporate suicide.

  So he’d turned to Scott, just as Scott had once turned to him.

  And over the past few days, Scott had come up with a solution. A crazy, wild, impossible solution. It wasn’t going to undo the dramatically destructive results of the UIGEA passage, nor would it erase the threat of what might come because of it—but it was a response that would take advantage of the situation in the best way possible.

  Scott painted a calm and cool mask across his features as he hurried down the hallway and followed Hilt, Greg, and the group of suits into the hotel conference room.

  Thirty hours later, with $130 million changing hands, a deal was struck. A deal that instantly changed the landscape of an entire industry and put Scott and his friends in the dead center of a brand-new—and exceedingly dangerous—world.

  It was sometime after 2 A.M., but it was impossible to tell for sure, because there weren’t any windows. Hell, from where Brent was sitting—sunk waist-deep into a huge beanbag chair in the center of a circular pit of overstuffed pillows, thick velvet drapes, and wicker tables surrounded by ornate, Arabian-looking hookahs bubbling out mysterious blue-smoke concoctions—the place didn’t seem to even have walls. The ceiling curved upward, mosque-style, and was dripping with colorful strips of fabric that waved in an artificial desert breeze provided by huge air-conditioning vents. The club was vaguely Middle Eastern, but Brent couldn’t be sure, because he wasn’t entirely certain where he was. He didn’t know Barcelona at all, and the streets of the damn city were as circuitous as those of downtown San José. He’d been led to the place from the hotel by the three young men who were sharing the hookah pit with him; two were his counterparts from Ultimate Bet, about his age and dressed in similar club garb—black shirt, dark jeans, and a plastic wristband from the mixer back at the conference hotel—and the third was from PokerStars, which, now that Party Poker had dropped out of the American market, was the biggest company on the block. All three did the same job at their respective companies; like Brent, they were in charge of payment processing—which meant that all of them were about to see their worlds turned upside down.

  In this new landscape, payment processing was going to change—in a big, big way. Although Neteller claimed it was going to stay in the business—UIGEA seemed unfair and unprosecutable, it said—Brent and his counterparts were very likely going to have to find many new middlemen, and soon, if they were to continue to collect deposits from American players. This meant dealing with the shadier and shadier outfits that would spring up to fill the void left by those who fled fearing criminal prosecution—no doubt charging exorbitant fees and turning what was already a shaky part of the business into something much dirtier. Because anyone willing to handle the flow of money in and out of Internet companies after UIGEA was risking being labeled criminal—and anyone willing to take that risk was probably already a little dirty to begin with.

  Brent didn’t want to think about what that made him; his name was on most of the financial transactions that had gone through his company since he’d been handed that stack of paper giving him the financial processing job. If anyone at Absolute Poker was flouting the new bill, it was him.

  At the moment he wanted to think about anything other than that. He took a deep breath, letting the thick, flowery scent of Moroccan incense blend with whatever the hell was bubbling out of the hookahs, and was reaching for what had to be his fifth shot of rum when a shadow leaped across their pit of beanbags and another guy joined their group. He was lanky, and wearing a poorly fitted suit. He must be a salesman of some sort, Brent thought, and as he shook hands around the hookah, Brent heard him introduce himself as another Ultimate Bet employee, in the Marketing Department. His name was Joe or John, but Brent had never been great with names, especially when his throat was full of expensive Spanish rum.

  He was barely paying attention as Joe or John—or maybe Joel—starting chatting excitedly about the conference, about some big development that had just been announced on the exhibit floor. He barely noticed as the other Ultimate Bet employees seemed to stiffen, then chatter loudly among themselves, their faces a mix of awe, excitement, and a little fear. He barely noticed anything—until he realized that everyone in the pit was now looking at him, and then he finally caught a few words that were still hanging in the thickly scented air.

  “Um, what was that?”

  “Did you hear the news?” the new guy said, his voice high-pitched. “Ultimate Bet just got bought out.”

  “Wow,” Brent said, unfazed, reaching for another shot. “By who?”

  “By who?” the guy responded. “By you.”

  Brent stopped, his hand frozen above the shot glass. “No way.”

  One of the other Ultimate Bet guys nodded. “It’s true. I just checked my phone, got three texts from our CEO. Guess what, Brent—now we all work for you.”

  Brent’s head was still spinning as he sat in the waiting area of the Barcelona airport, just inside Security. He was hungover as hell, maybe still a little drunk, and he smelled of alcohol, hookah smoke, and decidedly citric perfume. The perfume was French, though he was reasonably certain the girl had been Spanish; he was also pretty sure she was a waitress from the Middle Eastern club, though the night had gotten very hazy after the hookah pit. He’d woken up in a tiny first-floor apartment in the El Raval section of the city—which, he knew from a guidebook, was essentially the red-light district, a bit seedy, but also home to Barcelona’s artistic community. So maybe the girl in the leather skirt, leather boots, and nothing else on the futon next to him was an artist? He hadn’t woken her up to find out for sure. He’d just checked his phone, seen the twenty or so texts and calls from Hilt telling him he was going to miss his flight if he didn’t get to the airport right away, and yanked on his dark jeans and shirt and gone in search of a taxi.

  And somehow, he’d actually beaten Hilt to the airport—because he was already sitting there in the waiting area by his gate, his little carry-on bag under his chair, when he saw his brother’s main business partner come out through Security and hurry toward him.

  “We’ve still got a few minutes,” Brent croaked, his throat still feeling the effects of all that rum. “The flight got delayed. They say ten more minutes.”

  Hilt nodded, then dropped into the empty seat next to Brent. Hilt looked even worse than Brent felt; it was obvious he hadn’t slept at all. From what Brent had heard about the negotiations with Ultimate Bet, it wasn’t surprising. Normally, a merger like that would take months of due diligence, haggling, give-and-take. Hilt and Scott had gotten the deal done in thirty hours. A promissory note of around $130 million, $5 million in cash, a profit-sharing agreement—and just like that, Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet had become the third-largest online poker site in the world. Alongside PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, the two
other major private companies that had decided to stay in the U.S. market post-UIGEA, Absolute Poker was suddenly going to dominate a landscape that had been left open by the desertion of Party Poker and the rest of the publicly traded companies.

  Which meant that literally overnight, Absolute Poker’s revenues were going to go from around $200 million a year to as much as five times that amount. The amount Brent, personally, would facilitate the processing of would go from $25 million a month to closer to $75 million. It seemed like an insane, impossible number. And not only that: he was going to have to do so in an environment that was going to be more and more like the Wild West, because the rules were now completely uncertain and the middleman processors were going to get even shadier.

  “You’re going to have to make a decision,” Hilt said, continuing a conversation he’d been having with Brent’s voice mail. “And if you do decide to stick with us, you’ll have to follow some new rules. First, we have to ask that you not go back to the U.S.—it’s just too confusing, and we don’t know what will happen. So nobody with an American passport is allowed to go through the U.S. anymore, at least for the foreseeable future. We believe that in the long run, this bill won’t hold up—and even if it does, it won’t be prosecutable. But for now, if you go overseas, it has to be a direct flight.”

  Brent nodded. It was a strange thought, not being able to return to see family. It was giving up a lot. Weddings, funerals, birthdays—he’d be cut off from the people he’d grown up with, from parents and uncles and friends. For all of them, it would be an intense sacrifice. He knew that a good portion of the company’s American employees had resigned right away, but Brent didn’t want to walk, at least not yet. The thing was, his hands were already a little dirty; he’d been running payment processing for some time, and he knew that many of the little things his middlemen had done to get through the banks’ sometimes arbitrary rules were probably technically illegal. Forms that earmarked deposits for the purchase of golf balls and T-shirts, instead of gaming, were going to look pretty bad, even if they hadn’t hurt anyone, even if the banks had known what was going on.

  “If you decide to leave,” Hilt continued, “nobody is going to have any problem with that. But if you stay, we’re going to bump your salary to twenty-five thousand a month. We’re going to jump from four hundred employees to close to a thousand. And now we have offices in Costa Rica, Toronto, Vancouver, Malta, Montreal, Korea, the UK—the list is endless. You’re going to be responsible for many of them. As well as almost two million dollars a day in player money.”

  Brent’s hangover seemed to disintegrate as he listened to the numbers. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month. It seemed like a fortune. If things stayed like that for a while, he was going to get rich. Two million dollars a day. Hell, all of them were going to get rich. He had no idea how much Scott and Hilt were getting paid. He couldn’t begin to imagine. There was no more board, and a Canadian First Nations tribe was officially running the show. He wasn’t even sure what roles Scott and Hilt were going to play going forward; for all he knew, they were going to fade into the background and let the company run itself. It was a true empire now, with huge revenues—and a worldwide structure.

  “I’m in,” Brent said. “One hundred percent.”

  Before Hilt could shake his hand, a voice broke over the airport intercom in Spanish, then in heavily accented English. Their flight to Malta was about to start boarding. Malta. Brent was certain he couldn’t find the place on a map—and yet now he was on his way to visit a payment office there—an office that he now ran. A day ago he had been booked on a flight back to Costa Rica, toward his cubicle and his Neteller accounts and his handful of little headaches. Now he was on his way to what Hilt warned him could extend into a three-week around-the-world trip—to offices in a half dozen countries, offices that Brent now ran.

  Brent rose to his feet, excited and scared. He reached into the front pocket of his jeans, looking for his passport. Instead, his fingers touched something that felt like crumpled plastic wrap. He pulled it out, looked at the thing—and then his entire body froze.

  In his palm was an eight ball of cocaine—three and a half grams of the white powder, rolled into a little plastic-wrapped ball.

  “Damn,” Hilt whispered, staring at him.

  Brent clenched his hand closed, then looked around, at the airport waiting area. Travelers were lining up at the gate not ten feet away. In the other direction, other travelers were still spilling out of the security area, some repacking their bags and putting their shoes back on.

  Brent wasn’t sure how the coke had gotten into his pocket, or even whose it was. Maybe the Spanish girl with French perfume, maybe one of the Ultimate Bet guys, God only knew. And he had absolutely no idea how he’d gotten it through security.

  He forced his legs to start moving and quickly crossed to a nearby garbage can. Then he tossed the little plastic bag inside and rushed back to where Hilt was standing, still staring at him.

  “You’ve got to be the worst Mormon I’ve ever met,” Hilt said, bewildered.

  Brent grinned back at him. Together they joined the row of travelers lining up for the ninety-minute flight to Malta.

  CHAPTER 27

  Completely insane, man.” Brent’s voice croaked out of the speaker on the polished mahogany desk in Scott’s home office, mingling with the gurgle from the marble fountains out on the manicured front lawn drifting in through the open French doors that led out onto the two-hundred-square-foot balcony. “Malta to Dubai, then Singapore, Hong Kong, and all the way to Frankfurt. It’s like the Gumball rally in reverse.”

  Scott laughed. He was seated behind the desk, his white collared shirt open to the third button, a Corona in his left hand, his legs up on the desk, flip-flops on his feet next to the telephone speaker. In his lap was a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. As he listened to his brother his right hand rested lightly against the gun’s grip, his finger on the safety. The cool touch of the metal felt strangely comforting against his skin.

  “And every meeting has been just like Malta, back in the beginning,” Brent continued. “We get in there—this building had to be like three hundred years old—and everyone just stares at us. ‘What do we do?’ they ask. ‘What do you normally do?’ we ask back. ‘Just keep doing whatever that is, only now you’re doing it for us instead of UB.’ ”

  It was wonderful, the enthusiasm in Brent’s voice. Since the meeting in Barcelona and the merger, there had been so many anxiety-filled days and nights, but finally things seemed to be tilting back to a status quo. The new, supersized company was pushing forward on all cylinders.

  Even the disaster with Neteller hadn’t knocked them down—although it had been scary going for a while. Neteller had been a multibillion-dollar business, publicly traded, handling 80 percent of the processing market. When the two founders, John Lefebvre and Stephen Lawrence, were arrested simultaneously—Lawrence when entering the U.S. Virgin Islands—and charged in a sting operation headed by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, with help from the FBI, it essentially wiped Neteller from the map. Using UIGEA, the feds alleged that nearly 95 percent of Neteller’s $7.5 billion in revenue came from online gambling. The Neteller case struck fear in the companies that had remained engaged in U.S. business—essentially, Scott’s company, PokerStars, and Full Tilt, who together now had 90 percent of the market.

  For a good week after that, Scott fully expected federal agents to burst through his door at any minute—even though his lawyers had assured him again and again that the fear was unfounded and ridiculous; that he’d done nothing illegal in Costa Rica, where he resided; and that even if someone decided to come after them under UIGEA, they’d have trouble building a case that implicated him personally, since the company was now owned by the Canadians, and he didn’t handle the payment processing, and never had. Then again, the thought that Brent was at risk instead didn’t give him any pleasure, but in his heart he truly believed that non
e of them should be afraid of an unfair law.

  Still, the reality of the situation had affected him. Even his closest friends—Hilt and Garin—had commented on his growing paranoia.

  Scott glanced at the gun in his lap while Brent went on about his most recent trip to visit processing agents and their financial offices around the globe. Brent’s stories were pretty crazy. Since Neteller had gone down, the companies that had filled its place came and went almost daily, and were all shifty, sleazy affairs. They’d open, process deposits for a few days, then disappear, with whatever money they hadn’t yet turned over. This happened again and again, yet still there was so much cash coming in that it didn’t matter—a few hundred thousand dollars lost was almost immediately washed over by a few million dollars in player deposits coming in. Players never even knew what was happening behind the scenes—they could deposit and withdraw money just as before, without realizing where their money was going and how it was getting there.

  But the shady processors and Neteller arrests were just a couple of components that were feeding Scott’s paranoia. After UIGEA there had been quite a shake-up at their home office in Costa Rica as they absorbed the much larger Ultimate Bet. As with any merger, there were layoffs, but in a place like San José, layoffs led to death threats. Most had been things Scott could ignore: letters sent to the office, notes scrawled on cars in the parking lot. But a few of the threats had risen to a real, actionable level.

  Getting a gun wasn’t hard in a place like Costa Rica, where a hundred-dollar bill was enough to buy you just about anything you wanted and every taxi driver was his own little home shopping business, delivering drugs, girls, and firearms. But personal protection in a place like that didn’t stop at a handgun; Scott had made some inquiries and eventually decided to hire a full-service security company. At that very moment, as he sat in his office listening to Brent, there were two bulletproof sedans parked in his driveway, and eight armed bodyguards in his living room. There was another standing outside his bedroom door, where his current girlfriend—Miranda, a fucking gorgeous tica with long, braided blond hair and a treacherously curvy body that could have graced the cover of a swimsuit catalog—was still sleeping off the night before.