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Controversy, ups and downs - who is Dan Bilzerian? |Part I.|
Ten years ago, Dan Bilzerian was everywhere in the public eye. Today, however, the situation has changed and the "King of Instagram" is noticeably absent from the spotlight. So what happened to Dan Bilzerian? Take a look with us at Bilzerian's rise to fame and fortune, his recent controversies, and the reasons why he's currently staying out of the spotlight.
Who is Dan Bilzerian?
Born on December 7, 1980 in Tampa, Florida, Dan Bilzerian is a well-known social media personality, poker player, and entrepreneur. He grew up in luxury thanks to his father, Paul Bilzerian, who was infamous for his Wall Street activities.
Dan with his father Paul in the background
Paul Alec Bilzerian was a well-known takeover specialist, but he made history infamously through a series of lawsuits and fraud allegations. Back in 1986, the US government stumbled upon an insider trading scheme where Bilzerian was among the three suspects. Just three years later, Bilzerian was in court facing charges that he illegally facilitated corporate takeovers through methods in which one party would buy stock in coordination with another to artificially inflate the stock price. The charges also included intimidation and a hostile takeover attempt, where several shareholders admitted to being pressured and intimidated with the intention of having their shares sold below cost.
After a two-day trial in June, a jury found Bilzerian guilty on nine counts of the indictment, including conspiracy and making false statements, for which the judge sentenced Bilzerian to four years in prison and a $1.5 million fine. He began serving his sentence in December 1991 and was released from prison a year later in December 1992 to serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest. Well, it was in 1989, when Paul went to prison, that Dan and his brother Adam were left to fend for themselves.
Attempts to get into the Navy Seal
Many may not know that Dan's dream after graduating from high school, was to become a member of the elite Navy Seals. Despite tremendous effort, he failed training twice and never ultimately made it in. Dan Bilzerian's military career itself has been the subject of much controversy, with some claiming that he was disrespectful to officers and others claiming that he was regularly late reporting and disrespected orders from superiors. According to Dan's statement, he was not allowed to join the Navy Seals at first because of complicated fractures in both legs, and then a second time he was allegedly kicked out without giving a reason.
Failing Navy Seals training may have been a severe blow to Bilzerian at the time, but in some ways it was a blessing. Dan was given an honorable discharge and paid $6,000 a month salary for the aforementioned leg injuries. He first used this money to fund his studies at the University of Florida, but after a few years he quit the studies and took up poker full time.
Actor and writer
The attention-loving actor has appeared in several films, with his biggest film appearance being the role of Officer Dan Healy in the 2014 film Lone Survivor. Dan invested $1 million in the film in exchange for some screen time. This activity was not without controversy either, as Bilzerian sued the producers for $1.2 million after seeing the final film after his screen time was cut to less than one minute.
Later, Bilzerian himself withdrew the lawsuit, claiming that he had recovered $1.5 million due to the success of the film. In addition to acting, Bilzerian also wrote an autobiography called The Setup, in which he offers all readers his perspective on life. Despite the controversy that Dan is almost always associated with, the book has very good reviews (4.6 out of 5 out of over 600 reviews on Amazon) and readers praise both the writing style and the content.
Dan and Poker
Bilzerian came to the attention of poker players after finishing 180th ($36,626) in the 2008 WSOP Main Event. Despite this nice result, this cashout remains his only tournament entry in TheHendonMob database or WSOP statistics until today. Instead of tournament poker, Dan found a taste for cash games, and with his celebrity connections, it wasn't hard to quickly become a part of the high stakes private cash game community.
So years later, Dan found himself playing the infamous Molly's Game in the Los Angeles area alongside celebrities such as Tobey Maguire, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. In 2014, he publicly claimed to have made over $50 million on various high stakes cash games over the course of a year. In his own words, he achieved poker success by beating rich fish rather than by being one of the best players in the world. Whatever the truth, many people believe that this is a complete fabrication.
In the next part of this article, we'll take a look at where Dan actually got his money from, how he surprised people on his social media with a fake wedding, and we'll also talk about his suspicious corporate purchases, which included a paintball field, a climbing wall, and a $60,000 Star Wars weapons set!
Sources: pokerstrategy, distractify, quora, ganjapreneur, techopedia, Binance, Instagram