Ponzi Victims recover $1.75m from Tobey Maguire and Hollywood Poker Ring

 

Tobey Maguire Playing PokerFor close to a year, we’ve been bombarded with various stories of a Hollywood high stakes poker ring that included A-list actors Tobey Maguire, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck. The poker ring became a big deal when fraudulent hedge fund manager Bradley Ruderman lost $5.2 million of his clients’ money in these high stakes games.

Ruderman ran a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of nearly $44 million, and 22 of the defrauded clients have been seeking various ways to recoup their money. This being said, the high stakes poker ring served as a perfect point of attack since Ruderman lost of large amount of cash in these games. And now it looks like the investors’ decision to sue Maguire and others has recently paid off.

Investment Rakeback

Howard Ehrenberg, who is the bankruptcy trustee suing players involved in the Hollywood poker ring, says that the case has been resolved out of court. A collective $1.75 million of the $5.2 million that Ruderman lost will be repaid to the Ponzi victims; if you’re doing the math, that’s a little over $0.33 on the dollar.

Ehrenberg discussed the resolution with Celebuzz by saying, “All of the poker defendant cases are settled. The settlement of every poker related case without having had to incur the cost of taking any of them to trial means that the fund available for the victims has been maximized.”

Individual Actors affected

Certain celebrities were able to stay out of this whole mess, including Damon, DiCaprio, Affleck and New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez. However, Maguire wasn’t so lucky since he was thrown into the lawsuit after winning $311,000 from Ruderman. Besides the winnings, one big thing that got Spiderman added to the suit is when Ruderman said, “Tobey Maguire is the best player and a winner.” Based on all of the evidence, Maguire settled for paying $80,000 out of his $311k winnings.

Other prominent figures who where sued for poker winnings included former “High Stakes Poker” commentator Gabe Kaplan, “The Notebook” director Nick Cassavetes, music mogul Cody Leibel, and Paris Hilton’s sex tape partner Rick Salomon. These celebs settled their cases for undisclosed amounts.

http://www.macpoker.com/

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