Former WSOP winner pleads guilty to selling fake sports betting tips
Cory Zeidman ran a group for 16 years which defrauded bettors of $25m by giving fake insider information to customers in New York and Florida
Former World Series of Poker (WSOP) winner Cory Zeidman has pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud, having claimed he had insider information on sports betting to defraud players in New York and Florida.
Zeidman helped run an organization between 2004 and 2020 that placed national radio adverts to draw in potential customers who needed sports betting advice.
The adverts claimed Zeidman’s organization took a “sophisticated white-collar approach to gathering sports information” and promised “wagering as investing, not high-risk gambling.”
The organization led sports bettors in New York and Florida to believe they would be getting access to non-public player injury information and that group knew of “dirty” referees and which professional sporting events were “fixed.”
However, the information was either sourced from the internet or was fictitious.
For the information, bettors paid, in total, upwards of $25m with people using their life savings and retirement funds according to court documents.
Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said: “Zeidman and his partners baited unsuspecting victims with false claims of an edge in sports betting only to feed them lies and pocket millions of dollars from their savings and retirement accounts.
“Today’s guilty plea sends a message to all those who would prey upon the public by falsely advertising gambling as an ‘investment opportunity’: the only sure bet here is that this office will work tirelessly to root out sources of disinformation and fraud and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Homeland Security Investigations New York Special Agent in Charge Walker added: “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.”
Zeidman was indicted in 2022, a decade after winning a WSOP bracelet. He could receive a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and pay $3.6m in forfeiture and restitution.
No sentencing date has been set as of the time of writing.