Deputy Editor
Michigan poker player George Janssen Jr. received a three-year prison sentence last week, ending a bizarre fraud case that involved an apparently staged kidnapping.
Janssen Jr. had pleaded guilty in a case involving approximately $4 million in fraudulently obtained loans. The government’s case against Janssen Jr. said he still owed almost $3.3 million.
Janssen Jr.’s side of the story was a wild one, complete with claims of cartel abduction and months-long extortion.
The reality appears to be that an insolvent Janssen Jr. resorted to a scheme straight out of a TV plot to try to dodge financial responsibility. The one-time car dealer and four-time World Series of Poker Circuit champion will now spend the coming few years behind bars as punishment.
Judge Didn’t Buy Janssen Jr.’s Plea to Continue Playing Poker
Janssen Jr.’s attorney attempted to keep his client out of prison by selling the idea that Janssen Jr. could return to the full-time poker grind as a means of making his creditors whole. However, that argument doesn’t really hold much water.
According to Janssen Jr.’s Card Player profile, he has accumulated nearly $600,000 in recorded tournament cashes. In addition to his WSOPC rings, his scores include two notable cashes worth about $80,000 apiece on the old Mid-States Poker Tour (now Major Series of Poker the Tour).
While that sounds impressive, the math starts to undermine Janssen Jr.’s proposal in a hurry.
For one thing, that $600,000 has come across around 12 years of play, meaning Janssen Jr. has only averaged about $50,000 in cashes per year.
And that number accounts only for his raw cashes. Though Janssen Jr.’s attorney claimed to provide documentation that he was a winning player, even a winning player is going to have a significant amount of expenses and buy-ins, undercutting that total. Even in a fantasyland in which Janssen Jr. had a 100% ROI, it would take him decades to accumulate anything approaching the millions of dollars he owed.
That’s particularly true considering the stakes that Janssen Jr. appears to have been playing. He appears to be playing an average buy-in of around $500, judging by his most recent string of cashes while out on bail.
In the end, it appears a judge didn’t buy what Janssen Jr.’s legal team was selling. He’ll head to prison for a while before he can become a regular on tour again.
