Posted on: June 13, 2022, 01:39h.
Last updated on: June 13, 2022, 01:39h.
Poker star Daniel Negreanu has reported a $1 million extort plot against him to the FBI.
The player is currently in Las Vegas at the World Series of Poker and vlogging daily about his experiences. And they’re turning out to be pretty weird.
Just days after a strange encounter with flat-earther, anti-vaxxer, self-proclaimed “conspiracy realist,” and aspiring poker player Sara Palmer, things took an even nastier turn.
Palmer had accused Negreanu on Twitter of deliberately “brushing past her” in the hallway and “following her with a sense of urgency” during a break in play.
Her version of events appeared to differ from the vlog stream seen by Negreanu’s fans, which captured the exchange.
In the video, Palmer, off-camera, appears to interrupt Negreanu, who is in mid-flow, describing a hand he had just played.
“Do I know you?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he replies, apparently seeing her for the first time, perplexed. “You look familiar, though. How are you? You good?”
“I was good until I saw you,” she replied. “Keep vaxxing those babies!”
“There’s that whacko from the internet,” Negreanu told his audience, pulling an awkward face.
Extortion Attempt
Then, last Thursday, Negreanu received the following, probably unrelated text message.
“I’m gonna go public for what you did to your family in Lake Havisu. That was f*cked. I know your little secret. The whole world’s gonna know.”
Negreanu said he had to look up where Lake Havisu was. It’s in Arizona. He was none the wiser.
Later, he played a voicemail message from an anonymous male caller who claimed, erroneously, the player had abandoned his wife and children in Lake Havisu.
I got all kinds of people trying to hit me up, trying to make this go public. But I’m giving you a chance to make it right, man, just you know what I mean?” growls the caller.
“You pay me off, whatever, I’ll keep quiet about it,” the caller continued. “I’ll sign a contract, but let me know.”
“What the actual f*ck is going on this week?” demanded the 47-year-old Poker Hall of Famer.
‘Things Come in Threes’
“These messages escalated to the point where they started to get violent, threatening,” Negreanu told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “So, I brought in the authorities and whatnot. I think the most dangerous thing is it’s clear he believes it. He thinks this is actually true, which is the scary part.
“They say things come in threes,” he added. “You don’t want that sort of thing to come in threes. It’s just put me on alert that there are a lot of people that are unwell and I’m in the public eye, so I’m a target.”
As a result of this week’s experiences, Negreanu’s wife, Amanda Leatherman, wants her husband to hire bodyguards during the Word Series.
It’s an idea the troubled, six-time WSOP bracelet winner is not entirely comfortable with.
