Radar Online:

Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire is among more than a dozen high-profile Hollywood celebrities being sued in connection with a mega-millions illegal gambling ring that ran high-stakes underground poker games, Star magazine is reporting exclusively.

Maguire, 35, won more than $300,000 from a Beverly Hills hedge fund manager who embezzled investor funds and orchestrated a Ponzi scheme in a desperate bid to pay off his monster debt to the star and others, it’s alleged.

An FBI investigation into Brad Ruderman, the CEO of Ruderman Capital Partners, uncovered how he lost $25 million of investor money in clandestine poker games held on a twice weekly basis in suites at the luxury Beverly Hills hotel, Four Seasons, and the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard.

Tinsel town A-listers Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon also played in the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em games which had a buy-in of $100,000, multiple members of the ring told Star. DiCaprio, Affleck and Damon are not being sued.

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A while ago, I wrote a piece titled “Blowing the Whistle on Waxman.”  In case you missed it, I explained that Henry Waxman and I had been friends beginning almost 50 years ago at UCLA.  I also said that we had seen each other infrequently over the intervening years once he went to Sacramento as a state assemblyman and later to Washington as a member of Congress. 

Over the years, I moved politically from left to right, while Henry moved from left to far left to over the edge.  Still, I had a soft spot for him and, as a result, refrained from including his name when I would list the usual suspects, those left-wingers like Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Boxer and Murtha, who were doing their utmost to destroy America. (more…)

I have come clean in the past about having been friends with Rep. Henry Waxman.  We had met in the late 1950s at UCLA and wound up spending a lot of time over the following decade playing cards.  In fact, once, some years later, I received a phone call from a guy profiling Waxman for the Washington Post.  He wanted my impression of the young, pre-Congressional fellow.  I told him that Henry was a terrible poker player, but was very astute at hearts.  I said it made perfect sense because poker is a cut-throat game, every man for himself, whereas hearts is a game that involves constantly changing alliances.  I regarded it as a perfect metaphor for a career in politics.

I knew from personal experience that Henry was a fish when it came to poker, but it was some time later that I found out how truly awful he was.  Before being elected to Congress, he had gone to Sacramento as a state assemblyman.  Wherever politicians congregate, you will find two things — poker games and lobbyists.  As you can imagine, lobbyists are not there to win money from those they spend their lives trying to influence.  But it seems that Henry was so inept that, in spite of their best efforts, they kept beating him.  This so embarrassed the lobbyists that they finally banished him from the game.  (more…)