Host of High Stakes Ungerground, Palm Beach County Poker Ring

Dr. Michael Saltzburg Hosted Weekly $100,000+ Poker Games in His Palm Beach, FL House

 My adoptive father, Dr. Michael Saltzburg ran weekly high stakes, illegal poker out of his luxury home in the gated community Mirasol in his West Palm Beach, Florida home. I had the personal misfortune to be present during what was supposed to be a Christmas family vacation.

I had grown up with Dr. Michael Saltzburg gambling all the time, but while my mother was alive she put strict limits on what was ok and what was not ok, what money could be used (insisting it be kept completely separate from family money, for example.) It's weird how things become normalized when you grow up with it.

Fortunately, I was repelled by the whole gambling world. My mother didn't like it either but tolerated it.

But once she died and he retired, it spiraled out of control. It became his entire identity and purpose. It wasn't just the high stakes poker games (which he played with men with much, much higher wealth than what he had.) Daily bookmaking on horse races, sports games, etc.  Even when we were supposed to be on vacation with him, he would ignore us because he was busy making and placing bets on his patio, writing down the numbers on a yellow legal pad and making phone calls. Whether any of all of these bookie bets were legal, I have no idea.

He admired "Poker Princess" Molly Bloom. I strongly suspect that hosting the poker games was incredibly profitable for him. Exchanges in the tens of thousands were the norm. Whether he made money just because he was a better poker player than the rest of them, or took fees or a cut for hosting the game, I don't know for certain. 

It's totally illegal to host private poker games in Florida with bets or winnings of more than $10, and I can tell you that $5000 was nothing to these guys. I also know there were convicted felons amongst the players.

These guys threw money around like it was Monopoly money. Whether it was $5000, $10,000, $20,000, $40,000 or more – it was literally just a game to them. The losing players minimized their losses, “I only lost $10,000” or “I only lost $5,000.” It really was not the type of criminal influence I wanted around my children. One of the men was noticeably ogling my young teenage daughter, making both of us uncomfortable. 

He hosted weekly games and also attended weekly poker matches at an undisclosed location. Returning home from one of those games, he had checks totaling $40,000 that he had no idea why. He had to call one of his poker buddies about it. "What are these checks for? Oh, ok."

Dr. Saltzburg also took various sports bets and horse racing bets on a daily basis, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. He’d jot various bets on a yellow pad of paper and then make and receive phone calls regularly about said bets. Keep in mind I observed this my entire life - over a period of decades - to the point it was bizarrely normal to me.

As his abusive, toxic behavior became more and more clear to me, I wanted to get away from all of it, and keep my children away too. The man we thought he was had turned out to be a total illusion.

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