High-stakes clandestine poker world led to Hollywood Hills murder

Emil Lahaziel knew how to bluff.

On Instagram, he posed behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce convertible. “Flying high,” he wrote in the caption of a photograph taken on a private jet.

Never mind the seven-figure debt Lahaziel owed in his native Israel, according to a financial disclosure in a divorce case, or the admission to his wife that people were looking to kill him “as a result of some of the activities he did out of the country.”

So it made sense that Lahaziel spent the last night of his life playing poker.

In the early hours of June 7, 2023, he went to a hillside mansion rented by a social media influencer. A valet parked cars as guests arrived on Fareholm Drive, which twists above Hollywood. Inside the three-story house, a chef prepared meals as men placed “high stakes” bets at the poker table, a detective testified.

At 2 a.m., Lahaziel, 39, walked out to meet someone he thought was a friend. The masked and hooded man shot Lahaziel in the face, leaving the Israeli national to die on the stairs of the sleek white house.

“This was an execution,” a Los Angeles County prosecutor said at a recent hearing.

The motive for Lahaziel’s killing remains a mystery, but his death led the Los Angeles Police Department to investigate a circuit of high-dollar poker games.

Hosted in mansions in Encino, Sherman Oaks and the Hollywood Hills, the games brought together an odd collection of people, according to a search warrant affidavit. Israeli organized crime figures and Latino gang members played cards with deep-pocketed square johns. Organizers hired chefs, bartenders and women who provided what prosecutors described as “companionship.”

According to an indictment unsealed last week, the crowd even included a former NBA all-star. Gilbert Arenas, infamous for bringing a gun into the Washington Wizards’ locker room during a gambling dispute with a teammate in 2009, has pleaded not guilty to charges that he hosted illegal poker games in his Encino home. His lawyer didn’t return a request for comment.

When local police and federal agents raided Arenas’ house in 2022, they found a poker party “in full swing,” a search warrant affidavit said. A DEA plane overhead captured footage of guests fleeing through the backyard, with one man toppling into the pool. Thirty-six men were detained, along with a dozen “provocatively dressed” women, the affidavit said.

It is perfectly legal in California to organize a poker game so long as the host doesn’t take a cut of the winnings. But authorities allege sophisticated criminals turned poker games into an illegal enterprise, not only collecting a “rake” from the pot but also extending high-interest loans and extorting players who couldn’t cover their losses.

According to the search warrant affidavit, the investigation that drew in Arenas began when a desperate man sought help from the LAPD. He’d lost $1.2 million playing cards, he claimed.

When he stopped making payments, he told police, Israeli mob figures threatened to kidnap his children and toss a grenade into his home.

The man who owed $1.2 million explained to the LAPD how the games worked. The buy-in was usually $15,000. Most players didn’t exchange cash but played on what’s known as a marker, settling up what he won or lost at the end of the night.

In addition to poker, “there are women, alcohol, drugs and guns readily available” at the parties, the informant claimed.

He told the LAPD he lost the whole $1.2 million in one night. At a four-story Hollywood Hills home with floor to ceiling windows called “the glass house,” the man said he noticed the host was making odd bets. He counted the cards and came to believe two aces were missing from the deck.

The man started betting large. If he lost, he could accuse the host of cheating and refuse to pay his marker, he thought. His losses reached $1.2 million.

Instead of paying he fled to Israel, he told police. There, he met with some men who said if he paid around $600,000 his debt would be forgiven. When a detective asked if the men who called the meeting were from the Musli organization — a notorious mafia group — he replied: “No comment.”

“The Musli crime group is the single largest and one of the most violent organized crime groups in Israel,” a detective wrote in the affidavit. “They are known for engaging in murder, car bombings and extortion rackets throughout the world.”

After returning to the United States, the man said he was threatened by Yevgeni Gershman. A resident of Woodland Hills, Gershman immigrated in 2021 from Israel, where he’d been convicted of conspiring to commit murder and drug trafficking, the detective wrote in the affidavit.

There was more, the man claimed: Gershman was hosting a poker game at Arenas’ home.

A standout at Grant High School in Van Nuys, Arenas went on to play for the University of Arizona before being drafted by the Golden State Warriors in 2001.

He starred for the Washington Wizards until 2010. That year, he received a 50-game suspension for the locker room gun incident, which he has said stemmed from a dispute with a teammate over a debt racked up while playing cards on a team flight. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of carrying an unlicensed gun and played his last NBA game in 2012.

Former Washington Wizards player Gilbert Arenas takes part in a ceremony during the halftime of an NBA basketball game between the Wizards and the Miami Heat, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in Washington.

(Nick Wass / Associated Press)

A second gambler who owed Gershman money told the LAPD about Arenas. The former all star didn’t play at the game in his own home because he’d “lost all his money,” the man claimed. Instead, Arenas rented the house to Gershman and his partners for $2,000 a night.

The man told the LAPD he started as a “chip runner.” He paid out winnings and distributed tips to cooks, card dealers, bartenders and what he called “poker girls.” Those women, in turn, had to kick up 25 percent of their tips to Gershman, he claimed.

The host collected $200 per pot, he told the LAPD. Players who weren’t known to “the house” had to buy chips and cash out at the end of the game. Regulars played on a marker and were given a week to pay what they owed.

The man said he went from working at the games to playing them four nights a week. He estimated he was losing $40,000 a week. To pay the $1,500-a-day interest on his debts, he borrowed from his parents and friends.

He took out a $150,000 loan from Gershman, who charged him $7,500 a month in interest, he claimed. He paid Gershman the interest but never touched the principal, he said.

Armed with statements from the two debt-laden gamblers, the LAPD got a search warrant for Arenas’ home in July 2022. They watched guests arrive at Gable Drive, a winding hillside road overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Around 11:30 p.m., a DEA SWAT team swept in.

Prosecutors didn’t charge Arenas, Gershman and their alleged conspirators until last week. Contacted for comment, Gershman’s lawyer, Scott Pactor, said: “God forbid men have hobbies.”

“It’s an indictment that would make J. Edgar Hoover proud,” he added. “When’s the last time the feds busted up a card game? The 1920s?”

Released on $50,000 bond, Arenas appeared on a live stream the next day and claimed not to know much about his co-defendants, who he said didn’t speak much English.

“I’m snitching,” he said, before pantomiming a conversation with a co-defendant. “I don’t know your name. What’s your name? Igor? Yeah, let me write that down.”

Lahaziel had moved to Los Angeles just a few months before his death in the Hollywood Hills.

Back in Hallandale, Florida, he’d left a failing marriage and a curious financial picture. When his wife filed for divorce, Lahaziel reported owing $1.5 million from an Israeli bankruptcy case. Still, the couple together owned four homes and a yacht.

In a divorce petition, his wife claimed that Lahaziel confided in her that “as a result of some of the activities he did out of the country there are people that are looking to kill him.”

A friend told the LAPD that Lahaziel moved to Los Angeles to break into the vape industry. He was living at the W Hollywood hotel when he started hanging around Ricardo Corral, Det. Dave Vinton of the LAPD testified at a preliminary hearing last month.

The two were an unlikely pair. Lahaziel dressed in Givenchy shirts and skinny jeans. On Instagram, he flaunted a lifestyle of private jets, Rolls Royces and Richard Mille watches.

Corral, then 29, wore baggy hoodies and baseball caps. A doughy Pacoima gang member nicknamed “Beast,” he lived with his girlfriend and had to ask to borrow her Honda Civic, Vinton testified. Crude tattoos were inked on his neck, a horseshoe and the words “La Vida Ruina” — life of ruin.

Ricardo Corral, shown in an undated photograph from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, has pleaded not guilty to murdering Emil Lahaziel.

(California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)

Corral had already served three prison terms for assaulting a police officer, carrying a gun as a felon and shooting into a house, court records show.

Corral, the LAPD detective testified, said he met Lahaziel on Hollywood Boulevard and sold small amounts of cocaine to Lahaziel and his friends. Eventually, Corral began collecting money for Lahaziel, Vinton testified. The detective didn’t say what the money was for.

The last night of his life, Lahaziel went to a poker game hosted by Tony Toutouni, Vinton testified. Crowned “the King of Instagram” in a 2018 Daily Mirror tabloid article, Toutouni cultivated a playboy image, posting photos of himself surrounded by half-naked women and piles of cash.

Toutouni declined to comment when reached by The Times.

Vinton testified that two men pulled up to the house on Fareholm Drive in a Dodge truck that had been stolen earlier that night in Sylmar. Both men wore masks and hooded sweatshirts, but using phone records, Vinton identified them as Corral and Jose Martinez Sanchez, then 31.

Corral got out of the car. As he chatted with Lahaziel, Martinez turned the truck around and parked facing the direction from which they’d come, Vinton testified.

Lahaziel went back inside the house. Security cameras showed him walk out onto the balcony that overlooked the sleeping, glittering city, holding a phone to his ear.

According to Vinton, Corral asked the valet to get Lahaziel. As he walked out of the house, prosecutors charge, Corral shot Lahaziel in the face and neck.

Surveillance cameras did not capture the shooting, but they did show a hooded gunman running up the stairs, pointing a pistol at the fleeing valet. Vinton testified that Martinez drove Corral to a getaway car they’d parked several blocks away.

Corral and Martinez were arrested about a month later. At a preliminary hearing in July, their lawyers asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter to dismiss the murder charges.

Martinez’s lawyer argued there was no proof his client knew anyone was going to get killed when he drove to the Hollywood Hills. Corral’s attorney said the evidence establishing that his client was the hooded and masked gunman seen in the footage was “scattered and circumstantial.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s not always fire,” said the lawyer, Joseph Shemaria.

Hunter, unpersuaded, ruled she’d seen enough evidence for both men to stand trial.

The motive for Lahaziel’s death remains unclear. There were no signs that he’d been targeted for robbery, Vinton testified. Toutouni told the detective that Lahaziel had lost money at the game.

At one point, Shemaria asked Vinton about one of Lahaziel’s friends. The man told the detective he’d left the game prior to the shooting because he didn’t like how Lahaziel was playing cards.

“Does that make sense?” Shemaria asked.

Vinton turned to the lawyer and deadpanned: “There’s a whole lot that doesn’t make sense to me.”