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Table Of Contents

• Witnesses Testify Against Texas Poker Player
• School District Kickbacks

Former NFL running back Anthony Hutchison, a Houston poker player on trial for allegedly offering kickbacks to personnel at a local school district in exchange for retaining his company's services, lost in high-stakes private games nearly every time he'd sit down at the table, according to court testimony.

Ayaz Mahmood, a 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, told jurors Wednesday the accused criminal consistently lost — as much as $300,000 in one session — mostly playing pot-limit Omaha.

Mahmood, also a World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) ring winner with over $1.7 million in live tournament cashes, said he played poker with Hutchison a few times a week and that the two met years ago at Houston's Prime Social Club. Hutchison's wins at the poker table were, apparently, few and far between, and he'd often play on tilt and chase his losses.

“He would chase it,” Mahmood testified on the 13th day of the trial in a U.S. Southern District of Texas federal court, “We call it poker tilt, which means if you’re losing, you chase it and try to make your money back.”

Witnesses Testify Against Texas Poker Player

Hutchison, 64, briefly played for the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills in the 1980s. He retired from an uneventful NFL career in 1985 and would later go on to run multiple companies — Southwest Wholesale and Just Construction.

But he is alleged to have falsified his tax returns and used his businesses to fund his poker habit. He also allegedly bribed district employees to favor his businesses and overbilled customers for landscaping services, which caused "millions of dollars in loss" to a school district that paid his company, a 2021 indictment states.

Hutchison hired prominent Texas attorney Rusty Hardin, who has represented numerous high-profile athletes in court. Hardin's team has already cross-examined 30 witnesses called by the government.

School District Kickbacks

The poker player bribed Houston Independent School District (HISD) personnel with kickbacks in exchange for obtaining and retaining his services, according to multiple witnesses.

Prosecutors alleged during opening statements that Hutchison and his co-conspirator, Brian Busby, overbilled HISD more than $800,000 each year from 2013-2020. Multiple exhibits showing five-figure payments made from Hutchison to HISD employees have already been presented in court.

Prosecutors claim that when Hutchison had to pay off his poker losses, he'd write checks to Bulldog Timber, a company that acts as a middleman to loggers and sawmills. The business also cashes checks on the side, charging a three-percent fee.

Mahmood testified that he or one of his couriers would deliver the checks to Bulldog Timber, and then the cash would be distributed to the players from the private games. Prosecutors have presented to the court some of those checks, which list HISD projects in the memo line.

But Bulldog Timber's owner, Theodore Theilen, testified that he doesn't recall ever having performed any services for the school district. Prosecutors claim Hutchison intentionally misclassified checks to Bulldog Timber as business expenses as a way of reducing his taxable income.

Hutchison's attorneys, however, claim Hutchison's tax preparers are to blame for mistakenly classifying the checks.

Hardin claimed in court that his client suffers from a severe gambling addiction, to which Mahmood agreed. The WSOP champion did say that Hutchison always paid off his debts, though. But when ask by the prosecution to assess Hutchison's poker skills, he replied, "not too good."

The trial is expected to last approximately three weeks.