A professional poker player from Canada has been charged with fraud and other crimes for pretending to be an investment broker and defrauding clients out of $7 million.

According to Canadian media reports, Shaun David Rootenberg, 40, of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, persuaded people to give him money to invest in businesses in Canada and the United States to which he had no connection.

When victims suspected fraud, Rootenberg issued phony checks to them from different banks to make it seem like their investments were paying off, the reports said.

In all, Toronto police charged Rootenberg with four counts of fraud over $5,000, four counts of attempt fraud over $5,000, three counts of property obtained by crime over $5,000 and two counts of failure to comply with probation, the reports said.

“He was taking money out of one person’s pocket and putting it in another,” said Detective Constable Chris Devereux of the Toronto Police Department’s fraud squad.

“That’s what he does. He defrauds one person one day and then he has to defraud somebody else to pay that person. He has to go find somebody else to get the hounds off.”

Devereux said Rootenberg was convicted of two counts of uttering forged documents in 2006 and was given a 15-month sentence and nine months probation.

“The ironic thing is he was on probation for these previous charges when he did all of this,” Devereux said. “He has the golden tongue.”

According to the media reports, Rootenberg ripped off four people, including an ex-girlfriend and an ex-college pal, and two banks, for a total haul of nearly $7 million.

So how did the scam work?

Rootenberg presented himself to gullible friends as a successful investment broker and suggested he had stakes in several potentially lucrative business deals, the reports said.

After persuading people to put money into his projects, he would recruit new investors and use that money to keep the earlier partners satisfied that their investments were paying off, the reports said.

It was a classic pyramid scheme.

“There was no intent whatsoever on his part to fulfill any kind of contract or obligation he had set out to the victims,” Devereaux said. “These are smart business people who, based on the trust he garnered with them, ignored the red flags that were flying up.

“There’s a lot of frustration and anger and embarrassment on their part. They’re smart business people and they can’t believe they were taken.”

As a professional poker player, Rootenberg’s career has been less than spectacular.

According to tournament records, the only time he has finished in the money in any poker tournament was on December 12, 2005, when he finished in third place and won $16,401 in a no-limit Texas hold ‘em tourney at the Casino Rama in suburban Toronto.

So far, 2008 has been a bad year for professional poker players and the law. In addition to Rootenberg’s woes, it was revealed earlier this month that police in Wisconsin have issued an arrest warrant for poker pro Scott Obst of Las Vegas, who owes $115,000 in back child support payments.

And last month, professional poker player Shahram Sheikhan of Las Vegas was disinvited from a charity poker tournament run by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, after it was revealed that Sheikhan is a convicted child molester who served time in prison for committing sexual battery on a minor.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)=A0 =A0=A0=A0