Former Spider Man Tobey Maguire (Beast Poker Playa)

A number of celebrity card sharks are in hot water after winning big bucks from jailed hedge fund manager Brad Ruderman in a series of underground Beverly Hills poker games in 2007 and 2008, Star magazine and RadarOnline are reporting. Actor Tobey Maguire and Billionaire Alec Gores (#782 on the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires) are among those being sued. The pair allegedly won $311,000 and $445,000 respectively from convict Ruderman, who defrauded investors in a Ponzi scheme to the tune of more than $25 million. Ruderman is currently serving a ten year sentence in federal prison.
According to documents (Gores, Maguire) published by Star and Radaronline, the duo allegedly won portions of the money Ruderman embezzled as part of a weekly poker game, including $110,000 of investor cash that Maguire won in a single hand. The weekly games often included movie stars Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, as well as other celebrities who are facing lawsuits. Affleck, DiCaprio and Damon have not been sued.
The documents posted by RadarOnline are clear in the assertion that the stars are not linked to Ruderman’s scheme, however.
“The Trustee is informed and believes that the Defendant did not have any contractual or other relationship with the Debtor, that the Defendant was not a member of, investor in, or creditor of the Debtor,” say documents filed in both Maguire and Gores’ suits. Instead, the poker players received money to pay for Ruderman’s personal gambling debt.
The suits cite figures in Ruderman’s personal bank account to demonstrate that he would not have been able to pay off his debts without dipping into money illicitly obtained from his investors. “Based on the lack of sufficient funds in Ruderman’s personal account at City National Bank to pay the losses from the Poker Games, Ruderman transferred funds from the Debtor to Ruderman’s personal account at or about the time when the poker losses occurred and at or about the time when funds were transferred from Ruderman to Defendant,” read the documents.
Trustees of the suit seek to recoup the money in those transfers, which were allegedly “compromised of improperly-diverted investor funds.” Radar is reporting that Maguire has hired a lawyer to “to strenuously defend the allegations against him.”
Ruderman ran his Ponzi scheme from 2003 through 2009, targeting family members and close friends. The scheme raised upwards of $44 million dollars in two hedge funds — Ruderman Capital Partners and Ruderman Capital Partners A – and promised lofty returns of 60% per year. At one point, as the scheme began to collapse in 2009, Ruderman claimed that the funds held $206 million in assets under management; they really held less than $600,000. When he was sentenced in January of 2010, Ruderman admitted to losing $5.2 million in investor funds in clandestine poker games.