The Dishonest Downfall of Dan Bilzerian (Mini Documentary)

there's a lot of rich people in the world but there's not a lot of rich people living like you so first of all before we even get started i salute you sir i went broke so i was just like it was it was a wild ride how good is den bulsarian actually at poker where did dan get his money from how you may ask does this billionaire playboy philanthropist finance his life you know i beat one guy 54 million i mean i won 10 and a half and another night i beat another guy for 10. he claims to have won over 50 million dollars in one year of playing poker he's the son of convicted corporate fraudster paul bilzerian the trust fund ponzi scheme inheriting pseudo commando wannabe kirkland brand hugh hefner paul bilzerian a wall street felon i think night is dead in the water we're just waiting for the official announcement they have no cash they have no operations nothing is going on with ignite it's game over there was always something a little bit weird about him don't you think whether it was an inability to accept the reality of his eccentric lifestyle or the prolonged awkwardness whenever anyone asked where his money came from how much money have you made playing poker i don't know i mean something felt off every time so when an overwhelming array of evidence came forward regarding the fake golden facade of dan bilzerian's dream lifestyle i think it's safe to say that no one was all that surprised but the real question might be how did he even get to the point of having that fake golden facade and how did it all come crashing down how did danville's area go from a dude who got kicked out of high school for bringing guns to school i kicked out of high school and joined the military to a guy living almost the dream lifestyle to a guy who's being roasted by every corner of the internet for being a fake and a fraud the entire time after hours of extensive research i bring you the rise and fall of a man who built his life on a lie dan bilzerian lavish holidays high status the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want all aspects of the filthy rich lifestyle i'll set the same for you it's the 1980s new york wall street specifically suits with shoulder pads pants with suspenders and when dodgy wall street raiders were abusing financial loopholes to make cash hand over fist one of these slick wall street swindlers was an individual by the name of paul bilzerian a businessman real estate investor and corporate takeover specialist who by abusing these loopholes managed to make upwards of 400 million dollars in certain specific years still made 400 million that year you know suck it paul bill's aaron had been so successful that he decided to set up a trust fund for his two kids daniel and adam bilzerian who at the time were both younger than 10 years old now whether the trust fund was set up under the guise of compassion or the security of his kids futures there was somewhat of a catch to the fund much of the money in there had possibly come from a legal activity he's indicted for like tax and security fraud yeah yeah i don't know in 1989 paul bilzerian was convicted of fraud conspiracy and making false statements to wall street governing bodies your father was a corporate takeover specialist he went to jail for his business practice much of his fortune had been made illegally paul bilzerian was ordered to pay his entire net worth of 62 million dollars to the government as well as serve 13 months in prison so how did you find out if he was going to jail gonna be going away and i was like what do you mean he's like oh well you know we didn't get this appeal so it's safe to say that by age 10 his son daniel bilzerian didn't exactly have the greatest role model when it came to being honest in business but the story doesn't end there by 1991 two years after his conviction paul bilzerian filed for bankruptcy a bizarre move considering just two years previously he had a net worth of 62 million dollars where could the money have gone well this is where things get a bit grey but it seems as though much of the money was put into the trust fund set up for adam and dan bilzerian by 1997 the trust fund was worth around 12 million dollars which puts dan balzerian's net worth at 6 million by the age of 17 assuming a 50 50 split between him and his brother safe to say a pretty decent head start in life comparative to his peers so now that we've set the scene for dan bilzerian's life in the beginning let's progress a little bit here poor bilzerian going to jail began somewhat of a chain reaction for what would happen to dan bilzerian through his teenage years the imprisonment of his father led dan bilzerian to get excessively bullied at school which he described as traumatizing i sucked man like you know you got to go to school and all these kids are making fun and your dad's going to jail it's like i was kind of traumatizing a moment the result of the bullying and perhaps a lack of guidance from a father figure in the household caused dan to lose interest in school slacking off and being kicked out in the seventh grade i mean look i got kicked out of school seventh grade so i ended up living with my aunt and uncle dan bilzerian then went to military school then back to public school where dan would make somewhat of a stupid decision ultimately landing him in prison i got thrown in jail my senior year so like didn't really have a scene what do you got jill for at the age of 17 dan was kicked out of his senior year of high school for having a machine gun and shotgun in the back of his car not only was dan kicked out of school he was also thrown in jail for the incident she got thrown in jail um my senior high school so i didn't graduate so with the little information we have on dan bilzerian's early years it's safe to say that he wasn't really suited to school so what could be the best alternative to school for dan well i mean he could have gotten a job on a construction site or maybe a local fast food place but neither of those seemed somewhat appropriate for his personality type so instead dan bulzerian decided to join the military with the hope of becoming a navy seal at the age of 18 but there was a problem here started running i got an overuse injury turned into stress fracture as soon as dan bulzeran began military training he fractured both of his legs from overuse assumably from training too hard now this was an awful outcome for dan considering he was about to join the military and most individuals would have just given up at that point of breaking both your legs but what happened next did nothing besides display the insane work ethic and resilience of dan bilzerian he went through navy seal hell week stereotypically the most brutal week in the entirety of the military on two broken legs look just give me a shot i'm already here like let me just train um what's the worst that can happen he's like i'll bet you 100 bucks you don't make it through your legs are [ __ ] destroyed like i can't believe you can walk them so you crushed your own legs to get off the boat and then tried to get in the seal truck i made it two days before graduation and i got rolled all the way back to the beginning and my uh the officer in charge of my class he didn't really like me so he had me on watch every single night the whole course again so they rolled me all the way back he did the whole thing he couldn't even find excuses the third time he just admin dropped me i didn't even know that was like a thing i didn't know you could get admin drop but just as displayed after everything dan was unable to complete military training owing to his injuries dan had to drop out of the military at the time being devastating but later describing his military dropout to be a blessing in disguise at around age 22 after having to leave the military dan balzerian decided to go to college where he would learn the skill that would apparently lead to his financial freedom i i went to college went to uf and that's where you learned how to play poker yeah my brother taught me and then i was playing in college i was playing like some online stuff i had a couple fraternity brothers that were real into it and they taught me a little bit do you remember how we mentioned that dan bilzerian had a brother towards the start of our story well that brother an individual by the name of adam bilzerian happened to be a professional poker player in college my brother taught me how to play poker after receiving six thousand dollars from his honorable military discharge dan balzerian began playing poker you know i was getting the gi bill and the va was paying me and i was getting grants and everything for uh for school and so i was making pretty good money for a college student dan began by playing with his brother then with college friends then finally online but in the beginning dan wasn't very good because only one year after beginning in his second year of college dan went broke went broke my sophomore year so what was his solution not to stop gambling and you know make money with a guaranteed method but instead to sell three guns to fund more gambling i actually had to like sell three of my guns um and then i took that money went and like played on this gambling boat and while this sounds like the stereotypical pathway of a problem gambler this would actually prove to be one of the smartest choices dan would make in his early life i sold three guns for 750 bucks played on this gambling boat for a week turned into ten thousand went to vegas and then turned that into 187 000 appalachia after playing for three weeks straight never forget it and this is where the real rise would begin for dan bilzerian apparently after turning 750 into 187 thousand but it also happened to be the same time where the skepticism would begin for damn bull's area's apparent poker skills all in all while dan did play very aggressive i wouldn't say that he played all that great in fact there was some serious button cooking going on in this match i think that maybe he could beat some high stakes very soft live games but on the internet he's a fish in the water many of dan balzerian's poke games have been absolutely torn apart by real poker pros showing how awful dan is at the game this has led many people to question the legitimacy of dan valzerian's actual source of wealth which will be important for later parts of the video dead states to have beaten one individual for 54 million and two other individuals for 10 million dollars each like i beat one guy for 54 million and 54 million yeah stating that he was able to beat them because the poker pros just weren't that good back in the day dan balzeran's apparent poker escapades continued up until the year 2010 the year when the life of dan balzerian would really take off so here's a recap of the story so far dan goes to military drops out goes to college learns to play poker and apparently makes millions of dollars between the age of 25 and 30 which is where we'll continue our story now despite being a multi-millionaire by 30 years old dan's life wasn't all smooth sailing because in 2011 dan broke up with his playboy model girlfriend just after moving to la i was dating this one girl and uh she was a playboy playmate we ended up breaking up now while on the surface this was clearly a negative dane instead saw it as a positive because his newly single status provided an opportunity to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted fulfilling his bucket list and i was single and i was just like you know what i'm just kind of kind of like do bucket list like whatever like whatever i wanted to do when i was a kid i'm just gonna do it you know and i just did and i but there's something else to quickly touch on before we go any further 2011 also happened to coincidentally be the same year where he was finally able to access his multi-million dollar trust fund as left from his dad dan bilzerian later claimed to have only taken a very small amount and given the rest back saying that he didn't really need or care about the money i took i took like a little bit from that and gave the rest away but to me this seems a bit fishy for obvious reasons especially considering in another interview he said he didn't take any and just gave it to his brother did you get a trust from him i did but i gave it to my brother regardless wherever the money came from damn bull's errand was absolutely minted by 2011 and as a fresh bachelor just wanted to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted dan began posting pictures of his insane lifestyle to the photo sharing application instagram beginning in may 2012. dan began posting photos not to get famous was it was it part of a master plan or was it just fun no man i was just but it was like never like really to become famous you know what i mean it was just kind of like you know i was just doing my thing and you know we were getting pictures here and there but rather to get back at his ex-girlfriend it was kind of like a few to her show poker pros that he was just some rich idiot i wanted to be the rich idiot i didn't want to be the guy that hung out with poker players like i didn't want people to think i was good as well as the possibility of attracting other women now that he was single and that was really like the whole like start of this thing was just to kind of you know subtly brag online and get laid easier with less effort and social media was like kind of a tool for that dan began by posting fairly minor photos such as random photos with his brother his cars and him feeding chickens but as time progressed began posting more outrageous pictures of him with different girls private jets and an unachievable lifestyle now for obvious reasons this started to peak a lot of interest who was this crazy jack dude with a beard living a 16 year old bucket list lifestyle with all these hot girls and just posting it to instagram for fun was this guy legit was it all fake was he paying the girls well these questions cause people to follow and get invested in the crazy life of dan bilzerian the life of dan bilzerian began to spread like wildfire with every single male between 15 and 25 asking their friends yo have you seen this insane dan bulzerian guy as time progressed the ridiculousness of the post steadily increased and as the ridiculousness of the post-italy increase so did his followers debalzerian's oldest instagram statistics show that by april 2014 a little under two years after beginning instagram dan balzerian was already at 1.34 million followers one year later in april 2015 he was at 7.5 million followers then 16 million one year later again in a space of only four years dan bulzerian went from an unknown poker player to what many media outlets were calling the king of instagram by september 2018 dan balzeran's 24 million follower instagram empire was big enough for dan to launch his own brand ignite selling apparel beverages and various smoking products the company then went public at 2.50 a share in january 2019 now it's safe to say that by this point everything on the surface seemed to be going perfectly for dan bilzerian unlimited girls a lifestyle that 99.9 of people could only dream about riches beyond belief his own company what could possibly go wrong [Music] well as soon as dan's company went public the stock price fell from 2.50 to 54 cents per share a drop of approximately 80 percent all of the company descriptions began to read something about how important it was to be authentic as well as dan stating this to be his personal philosophy yeah i mean and i try and be authentic you know another one of his quotes you know rather than love rather than fame rather than money give me truth but as the old rule in psychology goes if you have to go to the effort of telling someone how truthful or authentic you are chances are you probably aren't that authentic or truthful ironically everything about dan bilzerian kind of reeked of a lack of truth his inability to tell the truth about where his money came from refusing to reveal how much he had won from poker the true nature of his lifestyle all factors possibly leading to investors steering clear of his company and even if he had won all of his money from playing poker rather than inheritance that would only make his case worse because it would show that he didn't have any experience running a company and much of his initial wealth was owed to luck not good business skills but honestly this was only the beginning of the end for dan bilzerian it was about to get way worse according to a lawsuit filed this week dan bilzerian rents his house and charges the rest of his six-figure lifestyle to a credit card that someone else pays off ignite lost 50 million dollars last year and is likely to fail now i think it goes without saying everyone knew that there would be a point where dan's insane lifestyle would catch up with him whether it be from old age his money running out or even possible future mental health problems stemming from years of partying we all had that same feeling of yeah this looks mad but there's no way that all of this can be real which in july 2020 would be proven to be the correct judgment as an overwhelming array of evidence began to come forward hinting at the illegitimacy of dan bilzerian's lifestyle the evidence began with curtis heffen and former ignite president stating that he had been fired from ignite for illegitimate purposes within the lawsuit was a stupid amount of information regarding bilzerian's ridiculous spending habits including a sixty five thousand dollar star wars set a seventy five thousand dollar paintball field twenty six thousand dollars from boosting instagram followers as well as paying for the various models seen on his instagram but the funniest part of this whole thing was that his huge mansion was actually rented for two hundred thousand dollars per month now why is this so hilarious well literally a week beforehand dan balzerian had shown kevin o'leary through the property stating to have paid 65 million for it he reportedly paid a mind-boggling 65 million dollars for this mega mansion and when kevin o'leary asked him about the tax rebates when he purchased it he gets pretty uncomfortable for obvious reasons can you write any of this off because it's really promoting your brand and your lifestyle i mean i talked to my accountant about all of it i don't know now this whole ordeal was basically the nail in the coffin for dan balzerian's credibility anyone who thought he seems kind of fake but there also seems to be elements of truth then decided yeah this dude is a total fraud but wait it gets weirder in september 2020 an article came forward claiming that dan balzerian's dad paul bilzerian was allegedly running ignite from behind the scenes on june 6 2020 during call with paul belizarian paul frickin balzerian which just adds another level of dodgy to the whole ordeal considering that paul bulzerian is not allowed to have anything to do with public companies following his prior conviction with the us government perhaps explaining why ignite is listed on the canadian stock exchange rather than the u.s stock exchange and just to add a cherry on top of the cake dan balzerian claimed to speak to his dad only four or five times per year i talked to him probably four or five times a year which is interesting considering his dad is allegedly running the company behind the scenes ever since all of this information has come out the stock price of ignite has gone from 90 cents per share to 26 cents a drop of approximately 70 percent over the last four months after ignite recently announced yearly losses of 50 million dollars many are speculating that ignite is done and will potentially be bankrupt within the next few weeks i believe that ignite is no longer i think night is dead in the water we're just waiting for the official announcement they have no cash they have no operations nothing is going on with ignite it's game over so if you're watching this in the future maybe you already know the outcome and that's kind of where we're up to with dan balzarian the mighty king of instagram from a school dropout to a navy seal to apparently a professional gambler to the king of instagram to a ceo to being exposed as a liar to having his company on the brink of bankruptcy i'm interested in people with the ability to climb the hierarchy better than anyone else but what i don't like is liars and that's exactly what dan balzerian has been exposed for a man who has built his whole life on a series of lies claiming to own the 65 million mansion when he didn't claiming to be a professional poker player when no records show that he ever was being extremely gray around everything when it comes to finances and where his money came from the whole human psyche has evolved around figuring out who we can and can't trust and those who can't be trusted are naturally sent to the bottom even if they do have other admirable qualities and this has been the fate of dan bilzerian years and years of lies growing and growing to hit one big pinnacle in mid-2020 and it's safe to say that this one might bring him undone over the long term i think as time goes on people are gonna you know they're gonna start to see you know who i am and and you know that stuff will you know come through in interviews and and like i said is you know the more people see and the more i do the more they'll actually get to know who you are you

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Rating: 4.8159838 out of 5

Keywords: dan bilzerian, dan bilzerian ignite, dan bilzerian lies, dan bilzerian mansion, dan bilzerian poker, dan bilzerian scam, bilzerian, where are they now?, a brief history, documentary, youtube documentary, where is, Biography, narration, video essay, twitch, youtube, entertainment, education, joon the king, fredrik knudsen, down the rabbit hole, no swearing, family friendly, sunnyv2, sunnyv2 downfall, downfall, demise, rise and fall, dan bilzerian downfall, dan bilzerian bankruptcy

Id: VD7rdgTLfHw

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020