A New York man has been sentenced to five months in federal prison for running high-stakes poker-games involving the rich and famous.
Edwin Ting was also ordered Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to forfeit $2 million.
US Attorney Preet Bharara says that from 2010 through 2013, Ting ran poker games for the Russian mob and took a percentage of pots that reached hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Players in the underground network included professional athletes, Hollywood luminaries and business executives, authorities said.
Playing poker isn’t a crime, but it’s illegal to profit by promoting it.
Ting was one of 25 defendants who pleaded guilty. They’ve agreed to forfeit a total of more than $68 million.
Ting was charged in April along with 33 other alleged members and associates of two Russian-American organized crime enterprises.