Employee Accused of Stealing $1.1million From Poker Magazine

A former employee of CardPlayer magazine has been accused of stealing more than $1million from the company and now faces 23 counts of theft involving writing fraudulent checks to herself, paying off credit cards with corporate funds and artificially increasing her own salary, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Shelby ‘Anna’ McCann, who was living in Hawaii when arrested, began working for the magazine several months after Black Friday in 2011, according to co-owner Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, who is also the magazine’s lawyer.

McCann left the company in 2016, and Allyn - a WSOP bracelet winner as is her husband and CardPlayer CEO Barry Shulman - claimed that:

“All of the sudden there was no money to pay the bills…  this made us start thinking: What the heck is going on?”

The couple put their $8million Las Vegas home, named Versailles, up for auction in October 2016, as reported here on PokerTube, Allyn claiming they wanted to “build a new house closer to their children and grandchildren”.

A crowdfunding page set up to pay for McCann’s defence, under her old name Anna, had raised $468 before being marked as ‘complete and no longer active’.

The LVRJ’s David Ferrara also reported that “…Raman [Chief Deputy District Attorney] and Allyn Shulman said McCann used a crowdfunding website to funnel upward of $22,000 for an adoption with checks written from the Card Player bank account”.

The defence crowdfunding page had stated:

“The charges against her are so over the top it’s absurd. Without giving too much detail, they reported to police that every dime she made there over a base $37k/year salary was fraudulent and unauthorized.”

McCann’s husband Benjamin is also reported as posting:

“This is entertainment to her accusers and they have deep pockets. My initial goal is to cover her bail bond and to provide a retainer to a defense attorney.”