The news broke rather quietly at about 7:30pm EST on Wednesday, January 8th, as a post on the Facebook page for the Foxwoods Assistant Supervisors & Dealers who are members of the UAW Local 2121. In a little over four hours, though, it had kicked up quite the storm in the poker community.
In the post, union president Billy Shea relayed the “highly disturbing and very upsetting” news that popular poker tournament photographer and video blogger Jay “WhoJedi” Newnum had been caught stealing what amounted to $700 of dealer tip money at Foxwoods. According to court documents obtained by poker news site PokerFuse.com, Newnum was arrested on December 16th and, according to Shea, Newnum was also seen on December 9th and 14th engaging in behavior similar to that which he was caught in the midst of on the day he was apprehended. He was apprehended after surveillance footage which confirmed what he had done was reviewed.
Both PokerFuse and Shea said that Newnum applied for the Accelerated Pretrial Rehabilitation Program, which, according to Connecticut’s Judicial Branch website, is a program intended to give those who commit crimes not considered serious, but that still carry the possibility of imprisonment, a chance to avoid having the crime on their permanent record. Because this was Newnum’s first offense and he had not previously used the AR program, he was eligible. As a result, Newnum will be supervised by the Court Support Services Division for up to two years, but should he complete the program with no problems, the charges against him will be dismissed.
PokerFuse reports that the specific charge levied against Newnum was fifth degree larceny.
Shea added that the union has requested a review of security footage from December 9th and 14th to see if it can be proven that Newnum stole dealer tokes at those times, as well. If it is evident that he did, Shea said that the union will seek to have him re-arrested.
As to how exactly Newnum was able to go about stealing money from the toke boxes, Sharon Fish, a Foxwoods dealer, posted the following on her @fishgirl54 Twitter account: “As a dealer from Foxwoods, I can confirm that this is true. Pulled the money out of toke box with chopsticks!”
Word is that he may have made the chopsticks more effective by affixing tape to the ends. It is unclear how exactly he was able to get away with the theft (up until the point he was caught, of course), but suffice to say, it likely took a decent amount of dexterity to slip chopsticks into a toke box and pull out money at least once without being seen.
The initial reaction to the news in the poker community was one of shock, as many doubted that it could be true. Those that knew Newnum or had any interactions with him have always said that he was a very nice guy, someone they couldn’t imagine would do such a thing. Some people were even upset to the point where they lashed out at Billy Shea for making the information public. Shea registered at Two Plus Two to address concerns and said, in part:
When this matter is complete I can assure all that I will come out with a complete and full disclosure of this deplorable activity. I have been openly criticized for going public with this claim, but I can assure all this is fact and it occurred in the manner that I mentioned. I am being very vocal because the employees I represent are one of me and if anyone took a dollar from you I can assure all you’d be very upset as well.
On the Facebook page, he added that the criticisms included “disturbing personal comments and attacks.”
Once PokerFuse posted its report, most people finally accepted that Newnum likely did, in fact, steal dealer tips. At that point, sentiment began to shift, with many people wanting Newnum figuratively pilloried and excommunicated from the industry for taking advantage of his position and stealing from hard working poker dealers. In between the extremes, others in the poker community simply want to hear all the details before deciding on how harshly they want to judge the offender.
Jay Newnum has yet to make any sort of public statement about the matter.
Where were the security in the sky people? They need a serious review of all of their procedures because if this could happen what else could?