Dan Bilzerian and His Incredible Fortune

Dan Bilzerian is one of the most recognizable personalities on US social media, with the 35 year-old multi-millionaire boasting 1.4 million fans on twitter, 10.6 million likes on Facebook, and a huge 16 million followers on Instagram. Many of Bilzerian’s fans enjoy following the exploits of the wealthy barrel-chested playboy who lives out his life surrounded by scantily dressed women, fast cars and a multitude of assault rifles and other weapons.
Interestingly, Bilzerian first came to the public’s attention after he appeared in a clip from the 2013 WSOP in which he was seen in the background audience intensely watching the game while having his beard stroked by an adoring young woman. After all, Bilzerian had a keen interest in the high-stakes poker scene long before fans started tracking his activities online, and at one stage Bilzerian asserted that he was making around $90,000 per week playing poker against some of his wealthy buddies.
In 2013, the Daily Mail even claimed that Bilzerian managed to accumulate his estimated $100 million fortune from his poker activities, although others point towards the generosity of his father, Paul Bilzerian, a corporate takeover specialist who subsequently spent 13 months in prison for securities and tax laws violation, and since his release now resides in St. Kitts in the West Indies.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, Paul Bilzerian managed to retain control of his wealth after his conviction, and in 1989 he was estimated to be worth around $50 million. In the meantime, the Securities and Exchange (SEC) Commission were unsuccessful in collecting a $62 million civil judgment against him, with Paul Bilzerian only having paid up a meagre $3.7m of that amount. Going back to the origins of his son’s wealth, GQ had these words to say:
“Some believe he made his own fortune in poker before his trust funds became accessible. Others argue that, quite the opposite, Bilzerian can only afford to take part in nosebleed-stakes games because of his dad’s offshore assets, and that rival players don’t just regard him as a fish [bad player], they see him as the ultimate whale.”
Just like so much about the fantasy life of Dan Bilzerian, the playboy and the origins of his wealth will continue to be shrouded in a cloak of mystery and notoriety, some real and some imagined, but with both undoubtedly serving only to boost his popularity further among his social media followers.