A Gambino-connected felon accused of running a rigged underground poker game with NBA players out of a swanky West Village townhouse triggered a mob battle over a rival game on the East Side, prosecutors say.
Ammar Awawdeh, 34, played a key role in the sprawling plot to run the sprawling rigged poker scheme, the feds allege, operating one of the crooked games out of 80 Washington Place, a Greenwich Village townhouse where rapper Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner reportedly once lived that sold for $17 million in 2024.
The conspiracy used Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and former Cleveland Cavaliers player and coach Damon Jones to draw in big-money players to underground poker games. They then used a sophisticated system of spying tech, including an altered automatic card shuffler, hidden cameras and an x-ray table, to make sure their victims lost, the feds allege.
The game became a sore spot between the Gambino and Bonanno families, the feds allege. The Washington Place game merged with another poker game run by the Bonannos at 147 Lexington Ave. in 2023 when they started using the cheating technology, the feds allege. The two families split the proceeds.
But in fall 2023, Awawdeh decided to restart the 80 Washington Place poker game — on the same night as the rigged game on Lexington Ave., the feds allege.
That went over poorly.
A group of Bonanno-connected goons stormed the townhouse with weapons on Oct. 11, 2023, assaulted Awawdeh and started a brawl, the feds allege.
Amid an argument over bail, the feds revealed in court Wednesday that Awadeh was once busted for fleecing a homeless amputee out of $1.5 million in legal settlement money.
Awawdeh even ran a rigged online poker game months after he was busted for conspiring with former Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter to fix two professional basketball games, prosecutors said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.
He was on probation at the time — for a particularly cruel 2015 scam in Queens that targeted a disabled homeless woman.
The victim won a $4 million settlement after she lost both legs when she was struck by a subway train. She went to Awawdeh, who owned a Queens deli with his father, and entrusted him with a $799,000 check thinking he’d use the money to run a tab, so she could buy cartons of cigarettes to resell.
Instead, he used the money to pay for his wedding, a Turks and Caicos Islands honeymoon, a bachelor party in Las Vegas and other gambling trips, prosecutors in Queens said.
Awawdeh, who was busted in 2018 along with four other defendants, pleaded guilty the next year to money laundering and was sentenced in February 2020 to time served, five years probation and $100,000 restitution.
While on probation Awawdeh ran the underground poker game for the Gambinos, the feds allege, and that game turned into a rigged affair.
Awawdeh was indicted alongside 33 other suspects in one of two indictments last week taking down both the alleged poker game scheme and a connected sports-betting operation accusing Jones and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier of tipping gamblers off to inside information before several NBA games. Billups isn’t named in that second indictment, but is referenced as an unindicted co-conspirator, law enforcement sources said.
Awawdeh, who remains held in MDC Brooklyn following last week’s bust, had been free on $100,000 bond after his arrest in June 2024 for the Jontay Porter case.
His lawyer, Mark Lesko, argued Wednesday for his release on $2 million bond, though prosecutors objected, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Iris Chen accusing Awawdeh of cheating a victim out of $1 million in a rigged online poker game in fall 2024.
Magistrate Judge Taryn Merkl said she was planning to release him, but ordered the hearing postponed until Thursday so she could interview all the family members who plan to secure the $2 million bond.