Roland De Wolfe in £10,000,000 Lawsuit Against Les Ambassadeurs

Iraj Parvizi, a wealthy Dubai-based financier, is in the middle of the law suit against famous Les Ambassadeurs casino. The whole ordeal started around the end of May of this year after Parvizi accused the casino of allowing two professional players, Josh Gould and Roland de Wolfe, to collude against him with the intention of parting him with his money.

After the game in question, Parvizi cancelled the checks he issued to the casino in exchange for chips in the amount of £185,000. The casino initiated a lawsuit to recover their money, to which the wealthy businessman answered with a counter-lawsuit claiming that casino failed to do anything to prevent the collusion and requesting the amount of £10,000,000 in damages – the money he lost in this particular game over the four year period.

According to UK Telegraph, the court proceedings are now underway, and one Richard Marcus, reformed poker cheater, was called in to testify as an expert witness. According to Mr. Marcus, who boasts he used to be “the best professional poker cheat”, there is no even a remote possibility that this game was fair and his testimony fully supports claims made by Iraj Parvizi.

At the same time, Les Ambassadeurs maintain that they had no knowledge whatsoever about alleged collusion and described Mr. Parvizi’s allegations as “embarrassing”. One very interesting aspect of this story is the disputed amount was described as negligible by several other regulars in the game and they were perplexed that Parvizi would make a fuss about it.

It is impossible to rule out the possibility that the rich millionaire was simply tired of losing over such a long time span and decided that something simply had to be wrong with the game – there is no other explanation. While the testimony of Richard Marcus does contribute somewhat to this lawsuit, an argument that can always be made is – how much can you trust a self-proclaimed professional cheat? I, for one, can easily see this argument being made in the courtroom.

Another thing definitely not working in Parvizi’s favor is his involvement with the one of the biggest ever insider dealing investigations as he is being looked into by the Financial Conduct Authority for alleged securities fraud. Perhaps the motives of this lawsuit go beyond those of financial nature and serve as a distraction from the bigger things happening in the background.

Either way, we will see how this ends. While Mr. Parvizi may have some circumstances working in his favor, collusion is not that easy to prove, even if it has taken place, and according to earlier statements by other players in the game, they had absolutely no need to collude to rid Iraj of his fortunes.