Fereidoun 'Fred' Khalilian, the creator of the failed PokerTribes.com and PokerTribe.com online-poker projects last decade, has pled guilty to a felony charge of witness tampering in a case stemming from his arrest last year for orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot against a filmmaker who has been assembling a documentary about Khalilian's long history of fraud and deceit.
Khalilian was sentenced yesterday in a Nevada federal courtroom immediately following the official acceptance of the plea deal by U.S. District Court Judge Richard F Boulware, II. The plea deal had been in negotiations for several weeks, and Judge Boulware had already rejected on two previous occasions earlier deals that would have allowed Khalilian's immediate release after being sentenced to his time served before the trial.
Khalilian was instead sentenced to a two-year term, and he will face numerous restrictions upon his eventual release. He had been held without parole following his June 2023 arrest after being deemed a significant international flight risk. The 13 months Khalilian has already spent behind bars count toward the two-year sentence, meaning he'll be due to be released in June 2025, or perhaps a month or two earlier if he qualifies for early release.
As part of the plea deal, the initial charge of orchestrating the murder-for-hire plot against filmmaker Juan Esco was dismissed. The witness-tampering count was in relation to his reaching out to associates, via recorded jailhouse conversations, in effort to have former bodyguard Michael Sherwood recant his testimony in the case.
Sherwood, one of many people contacted by Esco for his documentary, agreed to "deal with" Esco on Khalilian's behalf, then turned on Khalilian by working with Esco to contact the FBI and create a staged murder scene, including numerous photographs that were forwarded to Khalilian. Khalilian also sent several payments by wire to Sherwood before and immediately after receiving news of Esco's faked killing.
Unusual circumstances contributed to light sentence
Khalilian's seemingly light sentence was approved despite the fact that he could have been sentenced to as much as 30 years combined on the original two felony charges. One complication for prosecutors that emerged during the pre-trial phrase was that the agreement allegedly made between Khalilian and Sherwood was made via cell phone while Khalilian was out of the country. There also appeared to be prosecutorial concerns over a couple of statements in Sherwood's pre-trial testimony that were inexact or partly inaccurate, raising the possibility that Sherwood's reliability as a witness could become a factor in the trial.
Esco, the filmmaker Khalilian targeted, hoped that Prince Fred would receive a much longer sentence. He recently spoke to the New York Post about the case and his fears that Khalilian might defy the court's protection orders and seek revenge on the filmmaker, who also once worked for Khalilian. “The justice system is broken,” Esco told the Post. “He’s gonna get out and try to have me killed again.”
Separately, and before the plea deal was accepted, Esco expressed his fears about the case's outcome in a similar way. "I am hopeful the Judge will reject this binding plea again, as this is an insult to me and to all his victims." In addition to his various legal problems over the years, including telemarketing fraud, the alleged misappropriation of a combined $20 million from two Oklahoma tribal nations in the PokerTribes/PokerTribe fiasco, Khalilian repeatedly exhibited violent tendencies.
Those incidents including punching a waitress at Miami's Club Paris in the 2000's, a nightclub Khalilian operated that was fronted by celebrity Paris Hilton, and the immensely violent threats he made toward executives of Monster, the maker of headphones and other electronic items, amid his forced ouster and allegations of embezzlement from that company.
Khalilian's remaining time in prison will be followed by three years of supervised release. Other provisions of his deal and sentencing include the orders of protection relating to Esco, Sherwood, and a Monster executive, along with frequent drug testing, a ban on weapons, and extensive reporting of bank accounts and income, including from international sources.
