A professional poker player who owes more than $100,000 in back child support payments has turned himself in to authorities and been placed in jail.

A felony arrest warrant had been issued for the so-called “Bad Beat Deadbeat,” Scott A. Obst of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, by authorities in the State of Wisconsin, after the 39-year-old poker pro failed to appear in court in Wisconsin to face charges he owes $160,000 in back child support payments for a teen-aged boy he fathered.

The boy, Andrew, lives with his mother, Connie, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

According to media reports, Obst waived extradition from Nevada and voluntarily turned himself in to Wisconsin authorities last week.

The surrender came not long after a Milwaukee television reporter confronted Obst last month about the payments in a “60 Minutes”-style ambush interview outside Obst’s Las Vegas condo.

In that interview, Obst denied knowledge of the arrest warrant before running away from the reporter.

After returning to Wisconsin, Obst was jailed after failing to come up with $160,000 bail, the same amount he owes in back child support payments, media reports said.

“Here we have a mom and son just getting by, while the dad’s out in Vegas living the high life,” said Peter M. Wolff, the attorney for the boy’s mother. “It tells you what kind of deadbeat he is.” =A0 Obst was charged last August with four felony counts of failure to support a child, but failed to appear in Waukesha County Circuit Court in Wisconsin to face the charges.

The case goes back to 1991, when Obst was ordered to pay child support in a paternity case for the illegitimate son he fathered with a woman 17 years ago.

In 2003, Obst went to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals to challenge a lower court’s ruling that increased his child support from $1,500 a month to $4,000 a month, but the appeals court refused to overturn the lower court’s decision.

The appeals court ruled that Obst, who makes $400,000 a year distributing adult films and playing poker professionally, tried to hide his true income from the court, the boy and the boy’s mother.

Last week, in ordering Obst to jail, a judge said that Obst not only owes $160,000 in back child support payments, but also owes an additional $12,000 to the State of Wisconsin.

The $12,000 is the total amount in welfare payments made to the boy and his mother by the state–money that wouldn’t have had to been paid had Obst fulfilled his financial obligations.

Obst lives in Las Vegas with his wife and two small children.

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