Matt Damon, star of the Bourne series is among the big names to be spared a court battle which would have revealed details of massive illegal poker winnings.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Damon’s Good Will Hunting co-star Ben Affleck have also escaped the courts after being involved in games with jailed hedge fund manager Bradley Ruderman.
Ruderman conned multiple people out of millions of dollars before surrendering to the FBI in 2009. Two years later news broke that after reportedly losing $25million of his investors’ money, Ruderman was suing the celebrities who beat him.
It seemed inevitable that details of the high-stakes poker games; illegal in Hollywood; would come to light in the courts, but yesterday it seemed that the quartet of celebrities have gotten away with the cash.
The bankruptcy trustee who sued Damon, Howard Ehrenberg, told celebuzz.com that “all of the poker defendant cases are settled.
“The settlement of every poker related case without having had to incur the cost of taking any of them to trial means that the fund available for the victims has been maximized.”
Ruderman had been living a celebrity lifestyle himself, spending the victims’ cash in Malibu, California, before being jailed.
Poker is still illegal in California, though some States allow the game, and others are looking to get in on the act. There is a lot of revenue available in online gambling, Texas Hold Em and Fast Poker games on the net, and North Dakota is among the States already reaping rewards.
Tobey Macguire was the among the first to settle, agreeing to hand over $80,000 of the $311,200 that he took from Ruderman in the series of underground poker games. It is currently not known how much Damon settled for, but he is believed to have taken significantly more money from the ex-hedge fund manager.
