A wealthy playboy art dealer busted last year for his role in running a $100 million international poker ring blamed his gambling addiction on his family’s high-stakes “culture.”
Helly Nahmad, 35, the son of billionaire art dealer David Nahmad, pleaded guilty last year to running an illegal gambling ring out of his $21.7 million Trump Tower condo that sources said drew such A-list celebrities as Leonardo DiCaprio and Alex Rodriguez, and had ties to the Russian mob.
“Since I was young, gambling was part of my family’s recreational life,” Nahmad said in a memo to the federal court, pleading for leniency at his sentencing scheduled for next week.
By age 14, the memo says, Nahmad was hooked on gambling, using a bookie to bet on Knicks games.
He once lost a watch he received as a bar mitzvah gift in a pingpong bet.
“Helly watched me gamble, sometimes for high stakes, and it became part of his life, too,” Nahmad’s father, David, said in a letter to the court. “When he lost, he sometimes turned to me to pay his debts, and I did.”
Nahmad said he was losing heavily until he hooked up with Noah Siegel, a chess-playing Connecticut College dropout who developed computer algorithms that found weaknesses in odds-makings.
“Soon, Helly joined up with Noah and went from being a loser to a winner overnight,” the memo said.
“It was not about the money. Noah’s betting gave Helly teams to root for. It made the Super Bowl more exciting and March Madness more intense.”
Siegel, too, was busted in the probe.
In his plea for leniency, the filthy-rich Nahmad has begged a federal judge to sentence him to community service involving imparting his knowledge of art to the city’s less fortunate.
Prosecutors submitted papers Wednesday asking for him to receive 12 to 18 months behind bars when he’s sentenced on April 30.