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The roommate of the accused ringleader of the Blacksburg for-profit poker operation was also found guilty.
BLACKSBURG - A group of Virginia Tech students learned Wednesday that it's possible to lose money at Texas Hold-'Em without ever anteing up.
In the first local case of its kind in years, four card dealers and the roommate of the accused poker ringleader were found guilty of misdemeanor charges and fined between $400 and $1,000. The five Tech students, all of whom admitted in court to being paid for their involvement, were among 26 people arrested after a March 25 police sting operation on a for-profit poker game held in a Blacksburg apartment. The majority of the remaining defendants will be in District Court in Blacksburg today to find out whether they'll have to pay the state for allegedly playing in the illegal games of Texas Hold-'Em, a type of poker that has surged in popularity among young people in recent years.
Wednesday's court hearing began with 19-year-old Edwin Park, the man police say ran the poker game out of his Terrace View apartment, waiving his right to a preliminary hearing in Montgomery County District Court. Park's case now heads to the grand jury for possible indictment.
Park's roommate, Hamze Farhat, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of allowing an illegal gambling operation in his residence. Farhat, an international student, told Judge Randal Duncan that he's heard about poker games at Tech so often since arriving in Blacksburg that he did not realize gambling was illegal.
Farhat did not play poker but received several hundred dollars from Park for allowing the games in the apartment, Farhat told the judge.
"I didn't know it was illegal and most of the time, I wasn't at home ... so I didn't find it inconvenient to me," he said.
Duncan rejected a request by Farhat's attorney, James Montgomery, for leniency based on his client's clean record and misunderstanding of the law. Duncan fined Farhat $1,000, adding he wanted to ensure the engineering student did not earn a profit from his involvement in an illegal gambling operation. Farhat promptly appealed the decision to Circuit Court.
Duncan applied a similar standard to the four card dealers, fining each of them $400 or $500 depending on how many nights they worked and their estimated earnings. Park reportedly paid the dealers $10 an hour plus tips. During the March 25 raid, police recovered more than $2,000 in cash.
All of the dealers - Christopher Tyler, 20; Terence Chan, 20; Quang Nguyen, 19; and Christina Ko, 19 - pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of aiding and abetting an illegal gambling operation. Several indicated that they planned to appeal.
"I didn't think it was illegal at first," Tyler told the court. "And then I started to question whether it was illegal and found out it was, but continued to do it because it was a source of income."
The popularity of Texas Hold-'Em has exploded on college campuses and in high schools nationwide in recent years, spurred on by televised poker tournaments with cash pots often reaching millions of dollars.
Police in Fairfax County have broken up several illegal gambling rings during the past year. Police also recently raided what they said was a poker operation near Salem.
Playing poker for money is not necessarily illegal in Virginia. The games violate state law when someone begins collecting some of the money for operating the game. Operating an illegal gambling operation is a felony offense, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
