Hollywood Exec Ron Meyer is ‘Biggest Craps Player Ever,’ Lost Over $100M, Sources Claim

Posted on: September 2, 2020, 05:26h. 

Last updated on: September 2, 2020, 01:45h.

Philip Conneller @casinoorgphilc Read More

Expertise: Gaming Business, Regulation, Tribal Gaming.

Someone appears to have it in for former Hollywood executive Ron Meyer. Earlier this month, the 75-year-old resigned from his $25 million-a-year job at Universal after he was purportedly blackmailed about an affair he had in 2012 with the 20-year-old British actress Charlotte Kirk. Now, “sources” have blabbed details of his gambling habits to The Daily Mail website.

And if these sources are telling the truth, which Casino.org has been unable to confirm, it’s a pretty prodigious habit. According to “people close to the legendary former talent agent,” Meyer is the “biggest craps player ever” and has blown more than $100 million on dice games over the years.

“[Meyer] would stay at the penthouse suite at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York while on business, and the vice president of marketing at Caesars Atlantic City would send a helicopter to take him to his casino,” the source claimed.

“He would blow between $5 million and $7 million at Caesars,” the source continued. “Once he exhausted his credit line there, the VP would take him to Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut where he would blow $3 million to $5 million as well at each place.”

Mega Whale

Another source described Meyer as “probably in the top three most sought-after whales in the gaming industry,” before describing the penthouse suites and the hundreds of thousands of dollars in comps and promo chips casinos would lay on to try to induce him to gamble.

There have been whispers about Meyer’s gambling before. It was rumored that he won $400,000 from Ben Affleck in the private high-stakes Hollywood poker games that became the basis for the book and movie Molly’s Game.

Incidentally, Meyer’s daughter, Jennifer Meyer, was at the time married to Tobey Maguire, who was a major fixture in those games.

Deep End of the Pool

In his 2016 book, Powerhouse: The Inside Story of CAA about the talent agency Meyer co-founded in 1975, James Andrew Miller describes how Meyer, at some point in the 1980s or 1990s, was in the hole to mobsters for several million dollars because of his gambling.

“This wasn’t some casino on the Strip,” the book says. “The ‘guys’ Meyer was on the hook to only swam in the deep end of the pool.”

The Daily Mail source claims that Meyer, recently divorced and has now left his job at Universal, is once again facing financial difficulties.

When he finally filed for divorce, his wife had no idea he was blowing this money,” the source said. “He had to sell his $125 million dream house in Malibu. It wreaked havoc in his life.

“In the divorce settlement, his wife asked for forensic accounting, because she thought he was hiding the money. But he wasn’t hiding the money. He just blew it.”