A reputed mobster, who was once accused of beating his porn star ex-girlfriend, is charged in the FBI’s sweeping investigation into a multi-million dollar rigged poker ring that included former NBA players, according to officials.
Thomas Gelardo — an alleged associate of the Bonanno and Genovese Crime Families known as “Tommy Juice” — acted as muscle in the games, threatening victims to pay off their debts after they were ripped off in the poker games, the federal indictment said.
Tommy Juice was paid a portion of the proceeds, which he kicked up the chain to his mob bosses, prosecutors alleged.
Prior to his gambling bust, he whined about being kept behind bars too long after he cashed his adult model ex, Trista Geyer, stage name Kendall Brooks, after he was arrested in 2013 for allegedly beating her and then repeatedly ignoring a restraining order.
The charges were dismissed in 2016 after the “Naughty Athletics” and “Housewives Need Cash 5″ star claimed she couldn’t show up for the trial because of a “sick family member.”
For the poker scheme, Gelardo allegedly worked on behalf of the Bonannos making collections from the games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, according to the federal indictment unsealed on Thursday.
Follow The Post’s latest on the gambling scandal rocking the NBA:
The feds charged 31 people — including Portland Trailblazer head coach Chauncey Billups and former NBA player Damon Jones.
The Scarsdale, New York native, also received a portion of the loot obtained from a “rigged shuffling machine” at one of the illegal games on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan in 2023, the indictment states.
And between November 2022 and February 2023 Gelardo and others also extorted an unidentified victim, according to the document.
The scheme, according to prosecutors, was to lure unsuspecting victims, or “fish,” to play high-stakes poker games alongside former athletes like Billups and Jones, known in the ring as “face cards.”
The games were fixed in the house’s favor using sophisticated tech, including rigged card shufflers, X-ray tables and special glasses and contact lenses, prosecutors said.
“What the victims, the fish, didn’t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam. Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Gelardo and others shake down the victims for the dirty money, which would then be laundered.
