HOUSTON – Less than 48 hours after a series of poker room raid s, HPD Chief Art Acevedo pledged that his department was just getting started in its crusade against all things Texas. He declared that owners of boot shops and barbeque restaurants will soon be in the crosshairs of his SWAT teams. HOUSTON — Months after two Houston-area poker rooms were raided and closed, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dropped all charges against nine people arrested during those raids. The card rooms that are popping up in Texas are private clubs that provide rake-free poker games, as well as bridge, backgammon, chess, and beyond. Instead of a rake, which would make the game illegal per the Texas Penal Code cited above, the clubs charge membership fees, and in some cases seat rentals. Poker Room News Players Poker Room Gets Featured In Royal Oaks Magazine! “A Winning Hand” Players Poker Club By Angey Murray Private poker clubs are hot, and right here in West Houston, a new addition at 11326 Westheimer Road brings the action right around the corner from Royal Oaks. Houston Police raided two popular poker rooms, arresting nine people on charges of money laundering.

1. Poker Rooms Houston News Channel 11
2. Poker Rooms Houston News Channel 13
3. Poker Rooms Houston News Today

The saga of the city of Houston and itspoker clubs has to be one of the top stories of 2019. With arrests made andallegations of illegal money laundering, it seemed as if law enforcement hadthe upper hand. With the collapse of the case against those clubs, however, itis now pulling back the curtain on the legal system in Houston and thepoliticians and attorneys who were involved and roiling the political system.

Latest Actions Affecting Texas Politics

After learning that an advisor, AmirMireskandari, to Houston District Attorney Kim Ugg had been involved with two Houstonpoker clubs – the Post Oak Poker Club and the Prime Social Poker Club – chargeshad to be dropped by Ugg because of a conflict of interest. According toreports, Mireskandari allegedly was paid a fee to write legislation that would easethe way for the two businesses to become legally licensed in the city for theiroperations. While Mireskandari continues to deny these allegations, otherpeople in the Texas political scene are feeling the heat from their associationswith Mireskandari.

Accordingto reports from the Houston Chronicle and reporter Zach Despart, Mireskandariwas a prominent booster in campaigns for several Democratic politicians in thecity and county. Such people as Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, Harris CountyCommissioner Adrian Garcia, Texas Attorney General candidate Justin Nelson andothers were introduced by Mireskandari to operators of the poker clubs inquestion. Photos at the Chronicle show two of the owners of Post OakPoker Club posing with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner in December 2018,although Turner denies ever meeting the men.

These men and others are now disavowing anyassociation with Mireskandari or the poker club owners. Fort Bend CountryDistrict Attorney Brian Middleton was one of the most vehement deniers, remarkingin Despart’s article that, if he had known that Mireskandari was involved withthe poker clubs, he “wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. Period.”Middleton also returned a $15,000 contribution from Mireskandari’s politicalaction committee (PAC) Texans for Fairness

Good Investigation or Keystone Kops?

The entire Houston situation has eitherbeen one of solid, investigative work by law enforcement or a Keystone Kopsroutine that went awry. InMay, police stormed the Post Oak Poker Club and Prime Social Poker Club,taking in nine people who were either the owners of said clubs or employed asmanagement by the clubs. None of the patrons in the clubs at the time werearrested, but other card rooms in the state of Texas took note and some suspendedtheir operations.

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Things began to unravel for Ogg and theHouston authorities in July. Investigationrevealed the alliance between Mireskandari and the two poker clubs, includinghis work regarding lobbying for the regulation of their businesses. After furtherexamination, Ogg was forced to drop the charges against the owners and managersand return more than $200,000 in cash that was seized in the raids (Ogg didforward the case to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, however). Thenext month, Harris County officials were forced to drop “nuisance” chargesagainst the two operations. The reason for the cancelation was that, without acriminal case to back them up, the “nuisance” violations could not be provenand, thus, prosecuted, although they can be refiled at any time.

The debacle in Houston has also brought the focus of the national media. New Yorker magazine published a lengthy story, detailing out the efforts of Mireskandari and the number of politicians and law enforcement personnel he has been able to sidle up beside. It also probes the birth of the Texas poker clubs and why they believe that they are legal, despite what the law might say.

Whether this is the end of the Houston story remains to be seen. One thing that DAs hate the most is being shown up by someone they’re prosecuting, and the Houston poker clubs have certainly done that. But Prime Social isn’t letting the case go either, suing one of their former attorneys for $1 million for misrepresentation, negligence and breach of fiduciary duty regarding their work in getting regulations passed. We may not have written the final words on the Houston poker club scene just yet.

In what was a stunning afternoon ofactivity in and around the city of Houston, several top “card clubs” – basicallypoker rooms that were skirting the laws of the state – were raided by local lawenforcement. As a result of the raids, other card clubs in the area shut downout of an abundance of concern and the future of Texas card clubs has beencalled into question.

AfternoonRaids Lead to Charges

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On Wednesday afternoon, Prime Social Poker Club was raided by law enforcement officials of the city of Houston. The club had been advertising a poker tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $150,000 which, according to the Facebook page Free to Compete – Texas, was supposed to have started that same day and could have been the reason for the raid. Soon after this news came down, further information was passed along by Free to Compete that one of the other top rooms in the Houston area, the Post Oak Poker Club, had also been the subject of a raid by authorities.

Free to Compete kept a running commentaryon Facebook throughout the afternoon on their page, with updates that were inreal time and were sometimes mistaken. Early in the situation, Free to Competestated that players who were in Prime Social Poker Club were allowed to leavewith their chips and they were photographed but not arrested. A later update,however, indicated that the prior report of players being able to keep theirchips might have been mistaken, that the players were being considered aswitnesses (hence the photos) and that the general manager of the club was in handcuffs.

The raids on Prime Social Poker Club andPost Oak Poker Club sent several other rooms into protection mode. Mint Pokerwas rumored to have been raided, but that was shot down by late in theafternoon on Wednesday although the club closed for the day “out of anabundance of caution.” Late Wednesday evening, however, Mint Poker issued astatement that was pulled from Facebook that they would “temporarily suspendingmember services while (the Mint Poker legal team) investigates the closing oftwo clubs in Houston.”

OfficialStatements from Law Enforcement

Wednesday afternoon, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg issued a statement regarding the raiding of Prime Social Poker Club and Post Oak Poker Club. “Poker rooms are illegal in the State of Texas,” Ogg announced in the statement. “We are changing the paradigm regarding illegal gambling by moving up the criminal chain and pursuing felony money laundering and engaging in organized crime charges against owners and operators. Players are not being targeted.”

Houston Police Chief ArtAcevedo added his two cents in the press release. “We can’t allow illegalgambling to go on,” Acevedo said. “It drives organized crime and fuels othercriminal activity. According to reports, nine people involved in the ownershipof the clubs were arrested on money laundering charges and their respectivebank accounts were seized. They are:

Post Oak Poker Club

Daniel Kebort
William Heuer III
Alan Chodrow
Sergio Cabrera
Kevin Chodrow

Prime Social Poker Room

Dean Maddox
Mary Switzer
Brent Pollack
Steven Farshid

The five men charged from PostOak were all charged as owners of the club. Maddox was charged as the owner ofPrime Social, with Switzer named as the comptroller, Pollack as the generalmanager and Farshid as the assistant general manager.

What IS the Law in Texas?

Some have said that it isn’tagainst the law to play poker in Texas and that’s true – it’s not ILLEGALanywhere to “play” poker. Once money is used in the game, however, laws ongambling enter the picture. One of the key laws is that an establishment can’ttake a rake or fee from the game, which therefore makes it against the law.

In Texas, many industriousentrepreneurs thought they had found a way to circumvent this law. According tothe interpretations of many attorneys, these clubs were legal because of thefollowing reasons:

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1.The clubs were “members only” and private.
2. The clubs didn’t take a rake from any hands played on the grounds.
3. The members of the club are playing against each other and not against the house, with each player having the same chance at winning and losing.

So how do the businesses make any money,plenty of people have asked. In addition to their membership fees, these clubswould also sell food on the premises (alcohol is reportedly banned from suchclubs) to make some additional cash. The clubs were looked at as a saferalternative than the legendary underground games in Texas, although anoted online poker player was shot and robbed at a poker club in Austinjust last year.

And Whatis the Future?

Currently the nine people charged in the Houston cases are going to be tried for the money laundering charges, not for any actions they took as to running a poker room. But there is plenty of attention being drawn to the subject. In the Texas Legislature, a bill has been filed by Democrat Ryan Guillen (Rio Grande City) that would license and regulate the “social gaming establishments.” Right now, that bill is stalled in committee in the Texas House of Representatives and its future is unknown.

Whether the raids were truly what they were stated – a raid against money laundering – or something more sinister, other poker rooms must be on alert. Free to Compete has announced a petition drive to bring a grassroots effort together to combat the threats. As of yet, other organizations such as the Poker Alliance (which used to be their forte – the protection of poker players and their rights to play) haven’t yet spoken up on the issue, so it may be a fight that Texans will have to wage on their own.