Long Phi 'Bruce' Pham, one of a group of poker players who allegedly cheated in high-stakes home-poker games in Los Angeles in 2023, was arrested by federal agents on Monday in New York and charged with being the primary 'fixer' behind the NBA stat-shaving scheme in which Toronto Raptors guard Jontay Porter was banned for life from the league.
According to a United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York statement, Pham, a resident of Brooklyn, New York, was arrested on Monday at JFK International Airport. The SDNY prosecutors allege that Pham, 38, was planning to flee the country, having purchased a one-way ticket to Australia just three days before his arrest.
That purchase of the ticket to Australia came just one day after federal agents attempted to question him about the Porter matter. Pham lawyer Michael Soshnick, however, speaking to the New York Post, instead claimed that Pham was an elite poker pro who was on his way to Australia to play in a poker tournament. Soshnick told the Post that the 38-year-old Pham ranks in the top “one percent of poker players in the world.”
Pham has vague poker history
There's little recorded tourney history for Pham. His lawyer's claim that Pham was on his way to a poker tournament at The Star Sydney appears impossible. While a major poker series, the 2024 Sydney Champs, is ongoing at Star, the festival's last major event began on Monday. Registration closed for this AU $10,000 tourney at the start of Tuesday's Day 2, making it all but impossible for Pham to have flown halfway around the globe to participate once the international timeline is factored in.
Pham, though, does have some significant poker background. Last year, he was among several players publicly accused of being part of a ring of poker cheaters that allegedly stole many millions of dollars from other players in Los Angeles-area home games. 'BlankCheckBen' Ben Lee publicly named Pham as part of the alleged cheating group, along with Ye 'Tony Mars' Shen, Shane Hennen and others.
The games including Pham allegedly ran from March through October of 2023. Many of the victims were regulars on the Hustler Casino Live streamed podcasts, including Lee, Nik 'Airball' Arcot, 'Wes Side' Wesley Fei, and others. Fei has already become aware of the latest allegations against Pham:
Pham central to Porter ‘fake injuries’ case
Pham has been charged with conspiring with others to defraud an unnamed sports betting company, which could result in a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
Though the sports-betting companies are identified in the Pham criminal complaint only as 'Betting Company 1' and 'Betting Company 2', both companies are claimed to be official betting partners of the NBA. DraftKings and FanDuel are the NBA's only 'official' betting partners.
The two as-yet officially unnamed sportsbetting companies were impacted by the tainted wagers placed by Pham's crew, which would have netted over a million dollars all told if they had been paid out. Instead, the company used for the Porter wagers on the March game refused to pay out the bets, citing their suspicious nature. Whether that refusal triggered the investigation resulting in Porter's ban is unclear.
Details from the criminal complaint describe how an under-duress Porter agreed to fake minor injury or illness to pull himself from two Raptors games in January and March of 2024, thereby allowing Pham and his associates to place winning individual and parlay 'under' bets on Porter's individual statistics.
Porter already owed a considerable sum in gambling debts to Pham and his alleged co-conspirators, who allegedly threatened physical violence to Porter if Porter didn't pay his debt or agree to do a 'special', meaning to unexpectedly remove himself from the two games after playing briefly.
Pham is expected to be released on Thursday on $750,000 bond posted by family members but will be subject to home confinement, GPS monitoring, and other restrictions.
Three other alleged co-conspirators in the scheme involving Porter remain at large. This grainy security image shows the four men, with Pham the only one whose face is not blocked out:
Featured image: USAO SDNY
