Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist: The A-List Kingpin and the Poker Ring that Brought Down Tinseltown

About Dylan HowardHouston Curtis

Houston Curtis has lived a successful double life as both a producer and card mechanic for nearly thirty years. His credits include executive producing gambling related shows such as The Ultimate Blackjack Tour on CBS and pioneering the poker instructional DVD genre with titles featuring poker champs Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke. Barred from Las Vegas Golden Nugget for excessive winning at Blackjack Houston is one of the worlds most successful card mechanics and sleight-of-hand artists of the modern era. Curtis won the 2004 Legends of Poker championship before co-founding the elite Hollywood poker ring that inspired Aaron Sorkins Academy Award-nominated film Mollys Game. As a man with unprecedented access to the facts and a reporter who is one of the most feared journalists in Hollywood investigative reporter Dylan Howard has cracked open scandals that have brought down the careers of Mel Gibson Charlie Sheen Hulk Hogan and Paula Dean and others. Howards sense for news saw him rise to become the undisputed most powerful gossip editor in the world publishing dozens of salacious tabloid magazines each week including Us Weekly The National Enquirer Star In Touch Life & Style RadarOnline.com and more. Described by the New Yorker magazines Jeffrey Toobin as a tabloid prodigy and AdWeek as the king of Hollywood scoops Dylan also brought to light: the hate-fueled audiotapes of Oscar-winning actor/director Gibson blasting former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva; the scandal-plagued death of screen darling Farrah Fawcett; the naming of the mother of Arnold Schwarzeneggers love child; the demise of star-on-the-rise politician Anthony Weiner; and the Tiger Woods sex scandal. He also broke the story of the A-list high-stakes poker scam that was later made into the Oscar-nominated film Mollys Game. Most recently Howard made a name for himself with a stunning exposé of Sheen that revealed Hollywoods most unapologetic hedonist was HIV positive. It also was a story of extraordinary corruption violence lies intimidation death threats and millions of dollars paid out in hush moneya story that he chronicled in a first-person essay for The Hollywood Reporter that AdWeek called jaw dropping. In 2011 Howard was named Entertainment Journalist of the Year at the National Entertainment Journalism Awards where the judges labelled him the go-to guy for authoritative showbiz news and analysis on cable and over-the air television. Howard lives in New York City.