The Ultimate Story of Government Screwing With People's Lives

New York Times bestselling author Ben Mezrich appeared on TheBlaze TV Monday to discuss his latest book "Straight Flush," which fill-in host Stu Burguiere described as "the ultimate story of the government screwing with people's lives."

The author of the books behind hits like "The Social Network" and "21," the description of Mezrich's latest book reads: "The larger-than-life true tale of a group of American college buddies who brilliantly built a billion-dollar online poker colossus based out of the hedonistic paradise of Costa Rica. One problem: the U.S. Department of Justice was gunning for them..."

Mezrich described how the book centers around a group of fraternity brothers from the University of Montana who were some of the first to put poker online, before the U.S. government made the issue more of a "gray area" in 2006 and then "shut down all of these online poker sites" in 2011, sending the guys on the run.

"Essentially, online poker now is starting to become legal again, but in 2011 it was determined to be illegal, and these guys ended up paying the price," he said.

Burguiere responded: "I mean, this is the ultimate story of government screwing with people's lives.  Here's a bunch of guys who come up with an idea ahead of most of the entire world...they correctly predicted the business wave, they went and they did everything as they believed to be completely legally, they weren't breaking any of the laws, and the government retroactively made them into criminals and took their nine-figure business away from them."

Watch more of the interview, below:

Complimentary Clip from TheBlaze TV

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