The one girl charged within the sprawling New York Metropolis mafia and NBA-linked poker rip-off spent years cavorting with celebrities and musicians earlier than her beautiful arrest, high-flying pictures from her Instagram present.
Sophia Wei — a 40-year-old often known as “Pookie” — painted portraits for celebrities like comic Kevin Hart, and loved hanging out with hip hop stars and athletes, in keeping with her social media posts.
She notably painted Hart a large portrait of his late mom round 2020, writing on Instagram the way it was her first fee after she picked up the comb in the course of the pandemic lockdowns.
“Right here it began, previous to this piece, I used to be portray as a passion, to cross time throughout quarantine!! My very first fee!!” she wrote on her now-private Instagram, alongside a photograph of Hart holding her portray.
And the comic was simply certainly one of many.
Musicians like Drake, Ne-Yo, Jadakiss, Mary J. Blige and members of the Fugees appeared on her Instagram, whereas Shaquille O’Neal’s sons additionally seem to have purchased artwork from Pookie.
None of these celebs, nevertheless, had been implicated in any method within the huge indictment handed down by the US Lawyer for the Japanese District of New York.
Pookie was one certainly one of 31 folks charged within the scheme, which allegedly noticed mobsters from New York’s 5 Households use ex-NBA stars to lure excessive rollers into backroom poker video games — after which cheat them out of hundreds of thousands with an elaborate system of ruses.
The targets had been usually the one folks on the poker sport who weren’t in on the rip-off, which allegedly used electrical shufflers rigged with card readers that may inform an off-site handler who on the desk had the very best hand.
Handlers would then talk to the staff of cheaters within the room who would covertly advise the gamers how you can behave within the sport to attract as a lot cash out of their goal as they might.
Different techniques included X-ray poker tables that would learn playing cards by the felt, computerized card analyzers hidden in telephones — and even specialised contact lenses that would learn secret card markings seen solely to the wearer.
The video games had been principally run out of New York Metropolis, but in addition reached the Hamptons, Miami and Las Vegas.
Portland Path Blazers coach Chauncey Billups was linked to the scheme as one of the NBA stars allegedly used to lure victims in — and Pookie was even photographed alongside him at a poker sport in 2019, across the time the scheme first began.
Pookie was arrested Thursday after which let free on dwelling detention after posting $100,000 bail, and pleaded not responsible to wire fraud and cash laundering conspiracy expenses — all whereas sporting a “World Sequence of Poker” sweatshirt in courtroom.
Pookie notably trashed her longtime Queens condominium, together with her ex-landlord telling The Put up that she skipped out on hire and left an enormous nude portrait of herself painted on the wall.
She beforehand declined to remark when approached by The Put up.
