Professional poker player Damien LeForbes, a customer at Resorts World and several Las Vegas casinos, agreed to a federal court settlement Monday on charges of money laundering and illegal gambling. He faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine of $500,000 or twice the gross winnings or losses resulting from the offenses.
The Agreement on the admission of guilt says that LeForbes lost $148 million at Casino A from January 2022 to December 15, 2023.
It is not known whether Casino A is Resorts World, where LeForbes lost $12.3 million on nearly four dozen trips. reported from the current in May.
Earlier this month, the Nevada Gaming Control Board filed a Complaint against Resorts World for allowing illegal bookmaker Matt Bowyer and other players to bet despite having no credible source of funds. Among the four players named in the GCB complaint is Patron A, “an unnamed individual suspected of being an illegal bookmaker.”
The GCB complaint states that Customer A told his Resorts World host that he was a bookmaker and lost $10 million at Resorts World between September 2022 and December 2023, gambling on 150 separate days during that period.
“In some cases, the defendant recruited casino operators to act as agents for the LeForbes gambling company,” the federal court settlement states. “This included at least two operators of Casino A, who referred at least two new potential bettors to LeForbes.”
From October 1, 2021, to December 22, 2023, “the defendant issued at least 17 personal or cashier’s checks to Casino A, totaling at least $9,105,000” from a bank account used to operate the illegal gambling ring. LeForbes also paid Casino A at least $2.8 million in cash.
LeForbes paid the players with chips from Casino A and sent a text message to another illegal bookmaker saying, “(Casino A) is the most important because the chips are so versatile to me.”
LeForbes also used cryptocurrency wallets to accept and withdraw payments from bettors and gave bettors instructions on how to avoid detection, the settlement says.
“I would just send $100,000 at once to different addresses,” he told one bettor who expressed his concerns via text message. “You can create a different address in a wallet each time (.) Just don’t send to an exchange (.) Wallets are fine though… Just remember a new address (.) No exchanges (.) I do this every week for millions back and forth (.)”
The government, which seized millions of dollars from LeForbes’ California home in a December 2023 raid, agreed not to seek the seizure of $249,000 in cash as well as 5,000 Chainlink digital currency coins – valued at $11.32 per coin on Wednesday..
A casino report obtained by The Current shows that Resorts World turned over a $2.5 million bad check from LeForbes to the Clark County District Attorney for criminal prosecution earlier this year, but no charges have been filed against the player.
His Las Vegas attorney, David Chesnoff, declined to comment. District Attorney Steve Wolfson did not respond to requests for comment.
According to a source at the Venetian Casino, LeForbes also owes the casino $1 million. The amount was also sent to the district attorney, according to the source, but no case was filed.
First was The Current report last year in the federal investigation in California into money laundering in Las Vegas casinos.
Scott Sibella, the former president of Resorts World who was fired weeks after the story broke, made a deal with authorities for allowing illegal bookmaker Wayne Nix to pay more than $100,000 in cash to MGM Grand to pay off his gambling debts without filing a suspicious activity report, as required by federal law.
MGM Grand and the Cosmopolitan have since reached non-prosecution agreements with the government and paid a $7.45 million fine. Resorts World has not been charged with wrongdoing by the federal government.
