WSOP Winner Cory Zeidman Pleads Guilty to Sports Betting Fraud Scheme

Pro poker player and sports betting tout Cory Zeidman pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York Wednesday to defrauding customers in his sports handicapping business.

Federal prosecutors alleged that the World Series of Poker bracelet winner and his co-defendants duped customers to pay for betting advice by claiming to have insider knowledge, “only to feed them lies and pocket millions of dollars from their savings and retirement accounts.”

Boca Raton, Fla. resident Zeidman, 61, has earned almost $700,000 in gross tournament winnings in a 25-year poker career. He won his WSOP title in 2012 in 7-card stud. Prior to that, he was best known for arguably slow-rolling Jennifer Harman while holding a straight flush against her full house at the 2005 WSOP main event.

Scheme Generated $25M

From 2004 to 2020, Zeidman’s racket offered bettors access to “privileged information” about player injuries, “dirty referees,” and sporting events that were “fixed” – all false, according to prosecutors. The organization advertised its services on national radio using bogus names like “Gordon Howard Global” and “Ray Palmer Group.”

When bettors contacted the organization potentially to invest in the scheme, they were told it received information on injuries from doctors and that television executives were giving it the lowdown on the purportedly predetermined results of games. This rendered sports betting a “low or no-risk proposition,” prosecutors said.

Shortly after his arrest in 2022, Zeidman told PokerNews that he intended to plead not guilty, quoting Nietzsche (the last refuge of a scoundrel?) to insist his innocence.

“In the words of Nietzsche, ‘Everything the state says is a lie and everything it has it has stolen,’” he proclaimed.

Victims Disagree

But it was Zeidman who was doing the fibbing and pilfering, according to his victims, who contacted Homeland Security about his scheme. That’s in contrast to his description of himself as “an individual with the highest level of morals and integrity,” in his PokerNews spiel.

Sports bettors sought Cory Zeidman’s advice before gambling their money — but it was Zeidman himself who was scoring big through his deceptive practices, outright lies, and high-pressure tactics that exploited unsuspecting clients,” special agent Charles Walker of Homeland Security in New York said in a statement.

Zeidman pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud, which comes with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.