How Does Dan Bilzerian Earn His Millions? How Much Did He Make By Winning At Poker? Did This Poker Pro Pull Off Some Shady Business To Achieve Such A Staggering Net Worth?

Dan Bilzerian is epic, or it is what the trust fund baby and self-anointed millionaire poker player, wants you to think when you scroll down his Instagram page. The Instagram page of Dan is entertaining, which is why the page currently boasts over 28 million followers, and he averages around one million average likes and about 10,000 comments. The “Instagram’s Playboy King” definitely got his photo sharing and social media game down.

Born on 7 December 1980 in Tampa, Florida to a rich father who specialized in corporate raiding, Dan wanted to be a soldier when he grew up. He joined the Navy SEAL training program in 2000, but he was not a graduate, he failed to meet the requirement for joining the elite American army division. Dan was dumped from the program for violation safety regulation in the shooting range, and after an unsuccessful attempt to join the elite group, the future social media superstar joined the University of Florida and passed out with a degree in Business and Criminology which he utilizes to the fullest in his current business venture.

Source: Dan Bilzerian, Instagram

The reason Dan is where he is is because of his poker prowess, which he claims to be excellent. The man currently boasts a reported net worth of $150 million, which seems a lot for a poker player to amass and even his earnings from poker are disputed among professional players. He reached infamy when the poker player was dubbed the funniest poker player in 2010 by Buff Magazine. The type of publicity was something which more than propelled his career in social media. Even though he only finished 180th in the poker tournament, he still benefitted from the publicity and helped him get where he is now. There are many controversies when it comes to Dan and his hundreds of millions, so let’s break down all the ways he made his millions and whether all of them are through legitimate channels.

How Did Dan Bilzerian Make His Millions?

Dan Bilzerian is a trust fund child, and when he was 30 years old, the trust fund set up by his father kicked in and allowed him to access millions. The internet personality never disclosed how much he got from his father as part of the trust fund, but it was thought to be in tens of millions. Around the same time, he gained access to the fund he was spotted at high stakes games with a suitcase full of cash. Because of his appearance with the suitcase filled with money, he started to be known as the “Suitcase Guy.”

After his time in the army, Dan got an honorable discharge and a $6,000 grant which he used to get into the Florida University to get a degree but hard times hit harder when the money from his father dried up after his arrest and Dan was forced to sell his assets. From then on, he started winning and soon an ESPN video of him with a beautiful lady standing next to him and only stroking his beard was all it took to propel the star into an overnight sensation.

Source: Reddit

Dan soon received $400,000 to promote a now-defunct poker room and soon he moved on to antics on the internet to make money. He was seen doing outrageous things just for the pleasure if the viewing audience and he was able to carve out a person for himself which went beyond poker. From eye-watering bets, to once flipping a coin for $2 million in poker chips and losing, there is no shortage of evidence Dan is rich.

Instagram famous celebrity soon moved on to movies where he put up $1 million for the movie Lone Survivor starring Mark Wahlberg. The contract he signed with the film was for at least eight minutes of screen time and 80 words of dialogue, but the movie only allowed less than a minute of screen time and one line of dialogue. This resulted in Dan suing Universal, and after a while, he dropped the suit because he got the publicity he wanted and according to him, more than $1.5 million in backend profit.

Source: Dan Bilzerian, Instagram

Dan also invested in an up and coming to poker player Jay Farber, he invested 20% of his $10,000 buy-in on the Poker star, and after he won the whole series, Dan walked away with $1 million from a $2,000 investment. Endorsement deals and his own vape company, Ignite, which also sponsor Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, is obviously a huge investment for the Instagram star.

Dan is obviously rich, but is he as rich as he claims to be? Well, it is not clear with many people disputing the claim he is anywhere even near the vicinity of $100 million. People say the house in LA, he claims he owns, is actually a rental from a Singapore billionaire and interior designing experts said the furniture in his home is no more expensive than IKEA, also he is supposedly the owner of a insane house in Las Vegas. So, why would a person who claims to be worth $100 million + would leave in the same neighborhood as Leonardo DiCaprio while owning a multimillion-dollar house and use almost pedestrian furniture by his standard? There are also people who say the claim of $50 million winning from poker is largely inflated. But you can draw your own conclusions whether you want to believe in the self-professed multimillionaire.

How Much Were His Poker Earnings?

After he went broke in 2003 and he needed to sell all of his possessions to keep himself afloat, it is when he turned to gamble and started to stake the last $750 left to him after the sale of his assets and turned it into $10,000 by winnings. The internet celebrity was then on his way to Vegas, where he flipped the $10,000 into $187,000 and was on his way to greatness pretty soon.

Dan says he is a proficient poker player and won a lot of games and boatload of money, but those inflated numbers are not something you are allowed to do when participating in the nationally televised poker tournament. His first televised tournament the Ignite owner came in at 180th place and took home only $36,000.

Source: Dan Bilzerian, Instagram

The whole rage about his earnings comes from an interview he did with Howard Stern where he claimed to be in possession of over $100 million net worth, and almost $50 million of the cash was from previous years income from poker winnings. There is no one really disputing the claim of $50 million winnings, and there is also no one to corroborate his claim, so take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Professional poker player who visited the house of Dan Bilzerian do not thing the Instagram personality possesses $100 million with many players saying he is a fish (someone who has a lot of money and is a bad player) and doesn’t really know how to play to win something in the vicinity of $50 million in a year. Players who analyzed his playing style claim he is not disciplined and makes more silly mistakes to be able to win such a huge amount.

Source: Dan Bilzerian, Instagram

There is no way to confirm he made $50 million from Poker games, he claims the game to be handled with cash, and there are no paper trails to track his winnings. With is both convenient for him and infuriating to the rest of the world which can neither agree nor deny the claim.

Is Dan Into Shady Business Dealings?

It all seems super obvious if you look closely, Dan never played in high stakes games when he was still in college, by the time we were aware of the man named Dan Bilzerian, his trust fund money was in effect.

Dan’s father is a convicted criminal for tax evasion, and he was asked to pay over $60 million in fines, but Paul Bilzerian only paid $3.5 million. So, there was a lot of money in the trust funds for his two kids and by 2010 when Dan was claiming to be winning a lot of money his trust was open and he was getting money from the banks.

Source: Dan Bilzerian, Instagram

Since the man is involved in the marijuana business, which is legal in America, most people suspect Dan is using the claims of winnings from poker to launder money. There are also some conspiracy theories out there which claim Dan launder the said $50 million in 2014 and got a small share for his trouble.

Though the Instagram personality claims to be uber-rich, his dealings seem more shady than real. Though there are no active investigations into Dan, it seems he is walking the line of morally ethical and illegal like a trained tightrope walker, but one mistake and it will all come crashing down.

Source: Dan Bilzerian, Instagram

Dan Bilzerian likes to flaunt his wealth, is he as rich as he claims to be? Probably no. But he is still interesting to follow on Instagram, and many people seem to live vicariously through the bearded, barrel-chested, 5’9’’ internet sensation. Where he is headed from here on out is everyone’s guess and the two time heart attack victim sure seems to live his life in his own terms, how long will it last seems like a game of chicken, either he is going to blink, or we are, it will come to an end one way or the other.