Fast Life If gambling were easy,
everyone would do it. If people won as often as Rob Gorodetsky,
the self-proclaimed 'GAMBLR,' then it wouldn't be gambling, would it?
Rob Gorodetsky became a multi-millionaire, Instagram celebrity, and professional gambler
in just a few short years. He played poker with celebrities such as NBA player Russell
Westbrook, and he was friends with NFL players such as Odell Beckham Junior.
He was even known to give Drake advice on what games to bet on!
Except, not everything was what it seemed. As with a lot of things in Vegas,
Rob’s life seemed to be another giant illusion for anyone who was really looking.
Rob Gorodetsky's life of high-fashion, high-rolling, and higher gambling kept
growing. So how did Gorodetsky, or BigRob as he called himself, have the lifestyle he has? Was
the money he made because of sheer luck or sheer skill? Or was it something else completely?
Big Rob Gambling Hall BigRob got his gambling start
on the middle school playground when he was 13. He'd act as a bookie and
take on bets with his classmates. He’d also organize poker games. But as expected from
any good gambling story, he got himself suspended for it. Teachers at his school
learned that students were losing a bunch of money, and it was all going in BigRob's pockets.
When he wasn't running his gambling hall in high school, Rob was at his desk trading stocks on
his dad's Ameritrade account. According to Rob and his parents, he made tens of thousands of dollars.
His dad claimed that he made up to half a million dollars
in high school alone trading. Does anything sound fishy yet?
Despite being smart enough to make half a million dollars throughout high school,
Rob decided to go to college anyways, at the University of Arizona. However,
BigRob didn't last long. In fact, he didn't even make it through his first semester.
He dropped out despite his parent’s objections, and he played online poker full time.
Vegas Lights
Within 3 years, he built up a 90 thousand dollar bankroll. As soon as he turned 21,
he headed off to Vegas to run up his bankroll. But when he got to Vegas,
he moved away from poker and he began betting on sports. That was also around
the time that he began playing Blackjack, and also testing his luck at the roulette table.
And his betting started paying off BIG time. According to Rob anyways. As documented on his
now defunct Instagram account, Rob steadily posted winning tickets that just grew bigger
and bigger. The pictures of the payouts steadily climbed
from $10,000 dollars to $100,000 dollars and more. How exactly did Rob do it?
USA Today Rob's reputation grew so big that in 2017,
he gave USA Today a tell-all story about his life. The headline of the article was called "Is
This the Future Face of Sports Gambling?". However, in the entire USA today article,
Rob really didn’t explain anything to the methods of how he picked his bets. He essentially just
talked about how much he DIDN’T know while showcasing his lifestyle.
Gut Instinct
For example, on a college football game that he bet a hundred grand on, he told USA today that he
didn’t know any of the players. Yet he still bet on them anyways. Was he just trying to brag to
USA Today to how much he DIDN’T know? Was this a way for him to tell them what was REALLY going on?
He also told them that he bet as much as $150,000 thousand dollars per day on NBA summer league
games that year. According to Rob, he basically took his knowledge and his gut instinct and then
bet big. He then went on to say how other big gamblers would do it. He talked about the age-old
common practice of high-rollers bribing what Rob called quote “inner-city college kids” in order
to "shave points". Rob claimed that ten grand to these “inner-city college kids” would be like a
million dollars to them. And he couldn’t see how the inner-city kids wouldn’t do the point shaving.
Yes, this guy seriously said this back in 2017, not that long ago.
But of course, Rob never needed to do anything like that. That’s because his gut feeling won him
roughly 60 to 65 percent of his bets. He didn’t need analytics or cheating to make his money.
Betting Skeptics Renowned sports bettor Steve Fezzik was a skeptic.
According to him, if a gambler starts with $1,000 bucks and bets 10% of his total money a day, a 60%
win rate at the end of five years will get that gambler a billion dollars.
Fezzik states that an "All-Star" winning percentage is 55 percent. And those gamblers
with that kind of winning percentage know everything about the players,
any injury updates, and just any news. They know
EVERYTHING about the game and the players and they aren't just going on "Gut instinct."
Vegas Life Despite everything on
paper not making sense, Gorodetsky lived it up. His trademark piece was his hat with the word
"GAMBLR" stitched into it. If you've ever watched the HBO show Entourage, then you
have a rough idea of who Rob rolled around with. And he documented it all on Instagram.
If the woman, money, and the betting slips he posted weren't enough to prove how cool he was,
the celebrity pictures should. Such as Rob’s pic with
Cleveland Browns Wide Receiver Odell Beckham Jr.
Rob supposedly had met him through OBJ’s cousin, whom Rob had already knew. They met in the High
Rollers Lounge in Aria, and they soon were playing at the Blackjack table together.
Rob supposedly lent OBJ ten grand to play Blackjack because he didn’t have the cash
on him. OBJ also apparently was interested in having Rob put down 20 thousand on a game for him,
something that fell through. Do we need to say Beckham’s representative claimed that OBJ
doesn’t know Rob and that the picture was only taken because of a simple fan request.
OBJ wasn't the only supposed big-name celebrity on his friends list. Rob also claimed to be Drake's
gambling guru. He said that Drake once wired him $100,000 dollars to bet on sports games.
They had met in the same high-rollers lounge in Aria one fateful Vegas night.
Supposedly, Drake would bet through Rob for months.
Reps for Drake didn’t have any comment for Rob’s claims.
But it’s the same story for Rob and celebrities. He knows someone with a name, and Rob claimed
that they would bet through him. Each time, the celebrity or their rep would deny knowing Rob or
just didn’t have any comments. Signs of Trouble
USA Today wasn’t completely enamored by Rob. They mentioned a judgment against him back in 2014.
Gorodetsky was court-ordered to pay $59,000 thousand dollars to Linda Joseph and her
son Jeremy Joseph, for mismanaging funds he had agreed to invest for them. But according to Rob,
they lost money together investing in stocks and betting on sports, something that they had agreed
to do. He claims that he never did anything wrong. The court, however, felt differently.
The “Luck” Runs Out
Did Rob really make his millions from gambling? No. The simple truth is that he was gambling
with someone else’s money. What he did instead was the same thing he did to Linda and Jeremy Joseph,
except on a much larger scale. Big Rob didn’t make
any money from gambling. He simply had access to someone else’s money.
The Probabilities
He probably didn’t start out trying to scam the people closest to him. He might have genuinely
thought that he was good enough at gambling, or trading. Maybe in high school he DID make
a few grand, just not half a million dollars, on trading. And that gave him confidence to think he
could do it. And in order to make money in these endeavors, you gotta have money in order to make
money. So he took on investor money, and he had a good enough story to where people trusted him.
But instead, when he started trading, when he started betting, he slowly began losing. He got
comfortable for a while because he won here and there. That most likely gave him the confidence
to win and lose bigger and bigger amounts. However, with big wins also came big losses.
And whenever he had the big wins, he celebrated a little. But then a big loss came,
wiping out the win and not covering whatever money he had spent celebrating the win.
And this slowly started spiraling. He was slowly losing, and he was running
out of money. But he still believed in his abilities. So he took on more money.
And bet even bigger. And it just got out of control. This is one likely scenario.
But he might have just decided to run a giant scam just because he could.
Did Rob actually know all the celebrities that bet with him? He most likely did
meet everyone that he’s mentioned. But the rest of the story he
most likely just made up. Any sports celebrity who met and took a picture with him had to deal
with the unfortunate consequences of Rob showing up in their lives.
Victim A
Rob Gorodetsky admitted to stealing roughly $9.6 Million dollars between 2014
and 2017 from a person only identified as Victim A. However, it came out later that
Victim A was a successful New Jersey ophthalmologist. And he wasn’t just a
random person. He was the father of Gorodetsky’s then girlfriend! He had made himself out to be a
successful day trader to him. They were supposed to share in the profits Gorodetsky would make.
Their relationship began in February of 2014 when Victim A gave Rob almost a million dollars
to invest in the stock market. Rob, however, took roughly $747,000 thousand dollars of that money
and just simply spent it on himself. Gorodetsky invested only $215,000 thousand dollars.
To make matters worse, Rob then told Victim A in July of 2014
that his investments were paying off! According to Rob, he had already doubled his money
to $2 Million dollars in the stock market. But in reality, records show that the money
Gorodetsky had put into an ETrade account was worth less than $72,000 thousand dollars.
Rob told his ex-girlfriend’s dad that he could make even
MORE money if he agreed to give him more cash. And oh yeah, he also has a talent
for sports betting. So he was going to focus more on sports betting. And despite no real
evidence for Rob’s winning betting method, for some reason, he agreed!
For three more years, Rob would scam him of almost $10 Million dollars. He simply just used the money
to fund his lavish Vegas lifestyle and his losing bets. Rob would just create
fake balance sheets misstating how much money he had in their account.
As far as the dad was concerned, they were making a ton of money.
And here’s the ironic thing. It was that same USA Today profile that turned out to be Rob’s
downfall. It got the attention of investigators from the Nevada Gaming Commission and the FBI!
If he hadn’t decided to do the interview, Rob has a good chance of still running his scams today.
Prosecutors also said in court that before he scammed his ex-girlfriend’s dad,
Rob managed to scam over half a million dollars out of at least EIGHT other investors between 2011
and 2012. He spent roughly $231 thousand dollars for personal use and lost the rest on trading!
Did Rob actually start off wanting to scam people he knew? Maybe. Maybe not.
Aftermath
Rob Gorodetsky pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and submitting fake tax returns.
According to his 2016 tax returns, Rob only made
$10,520 dollars that year. Rob was sentenced to 28 months in prison for
wire fraud and tax evasion in April of 2021, and ordered to repay $7.2 million dollars.
Here’s what’s next!