Eli Elezra Owes Me $835k and Threatened My Family, Claims Abe Mosseri

The Eli Elezra debt controversy took a new and potentially sinister turn yesterday when highstakes pro Abe Mosseri claimed that Elezra not only owes him $835,000 on an unpaid loan, but has also threatened Mosseri and his family to keep the debt quiet…

Elezra has been under attack all week following an AMA (Ask me Anything) thread on the 2plus2 poker forum went pear-shaped, the businessman-turned-High Stakes Poker TV star’s claims that he ‘pays all his debts’ meeting with refutations right, left – and soon possibly centre as well…

After Cole South went public with claims that Elezra still owes him $40k of a $100k loan from 2010, it was Abe Mosseri’s turn to lambast Elezra.

“I decided today to speak out after Eli sent me texts of threats about my family most likely scared I was going to out him…” began Mosseri, adding, “…Figure is 853k. A loan not a gambling debt”.

Earlier in the day Elezra had released a statement claiming

“I don’t ignore text messages and haven’t seen him or gotten a message from him [Cole South] in years”.

He also stated:

“The deals and arrangements they [highstakes pros] make in this regard have always been private and I believe they will always remain private. It’s nobody else’s business anyhow”.

While South was again quick to release text messages that appear to disprove Elezra’s version of events, Mosseri says he has been advised by his lawyers not to do the same. He did, however, post several times.

“It was the dumbest thing I have ever done and take responsibility for the loan”, Mosseri admitted, adding: “I would appreciate if you guys would not bash my family for they have been hurt enough from Eli and the stupid thing I did out of good faith to a person I thought was a friend. To my family I would like to say I’m sorry”.

Mosseri, a huge live and online winner back in the heyday of Full Tilt Poker, claims that the original loan he gave Elezra was for “more than a million” and that Elezra “paid a little the first 3 months, 9 years ago, with a discount”.

Since then, however, Mosseri says that Elezra has not only paid him nothing, but has sent him

“Messages lying and saying my family is making threats on his children and he is going to the FBI to have me arrested…”

An anonymous 2plus2 forum poster, who seems to have an inside track on the highstakes cash game poker world that both Mosseri and Elezra frequented back in the heyday of the game almost a decade ago, made a startling claim some time ago – one which makes more sense given Mosseri’s recent claims.

“Eli Elezra was attacked by a girl in Bobby room last night after shooting the woman a bird that he owes 1.5 million to her husband’, claimed Privateworld, who has also posted under several other pseudonyms on the 2plus2 site and is currently banned from the site.

The poster added:

"No person helped him took 10 minutes for security to get there… He has robbed the entire poker community …people actually clapped outside in poker room”.

Elezra’s recently-released English translation of his autobiography ‘Pulling the Trigger’ makes no mention of any specific loans or debts, mentioning only that he often took money from his Vegas businesses to bankroll his highstakes games against the likes of Doyle Brunson and Chip Reese.

With Elezra yet to respond publicly to Mosseri’s claims, and rumours abounding that Mosseri and South are only two of many people he owes huge sums of money to, this story may well have plenty of gas left in it yet.