The collapse of Harris County’s criminal cases against two Houston private poker clubs after prosecutors discovered multiple conflicts of interest — including the district attorney’s own consultant — has left several elected officials straining to justify their relationships with the game room proprietors and former aide.

Revelations of Amir Mireskandari’s ties to poker clubs left several former Democratic candidates to explain why they welcomed him as a fundraiser and adviser, and shed light on a world where a checkbook can spur fast friendships, with few questions asked, between donors and those seeking office.

The ambitious Democratic booster donated office space to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s campaign and told the Houston Chronicle he facilitated meetings for Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton, Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia and Texas attorney general candidate Justin Nelson with the poker club proprietors. Often, those meetings were followed by donations to the candidates from Mireskandari himself, his political action committees or a company registered to one of the poker clubs’ owners.

After many of these candidates won election in 2018, Mireskandari sought, with varying levels of success, to leverage his support for their campaigns by offering the use of a courtroom he had built to Harris County, helping interview prospective prosecutors for Middleton, and seeking a county appointment to a local committee trying to lure a World Cup to Houston.

Mireskandari said he never told them he was working on behalf of poker clubs at the same time.

District Attorney Kim Ogg said she learned only after she had filed felony charges against nine employees of the Prime Social and Post Oak poker clubs in May that Mireskandari, a financial crimes consultant for her office, had been lobbying on behalf of Prime Social. The club, like its competitors, was seeking legitimacy from law enforcement and elected officials.

Ogg in July dismissed the charges of money laundering, gambling promotion and engaging in organized crime, citing several conflicts of interest, including Mireskandari. She forwarded the case documents to the FBI.

In an Aug. 24 interview, Ogg said the additional conflicts were donations from poker proprietors to the campaign accounts of Garcia and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Ogg said she also was concerned the club had courted Mayor Sylvester Turner, including through a slideshow presentation of its business model at a December meeting with club owners, of which the mayor says he has no recollection.

Ogg said she believed the poker club defendants would argue in court these public officials had endorsed their business model, making the prosecution illegitimate.

“It was pretty clear, based on the texts I read of the owner-operators talking about Ken Paxton, Adrian Garcia, Mayor Turner, that they were trying to somehow get authorization to proceed with their business plan,” Ogg said. She added, “I dismissed the cases. That does not mean the behavior was legal.”

In an effort to discourage the federal government from bringing charges, Prime Social referenced those political contacts in a recent memo to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, arguing that Garcia, Middleton and Mireskandari had given tacit or explicit blessing to its business model, and “led Prime Social to believe they were acting in a lawful manner.” Middleton and Garcia deny having made any such endorsement.

The conflicts torpedoed a major gambling prosecution, and muddled the message Ogg intended to send to the dozens of private Houston-area poker rooms that have opened in the past three years: If you are operating outside the law, we will shut you down.

Days after the cases were dismissed, Prime Social told the newspaper it had paid Houston private investigator Tim D. Wilson $250,000 for he and Mireskandari to draft a city ordinance regulating gambling establishments, alleging the pair failed to make meaningful progress on the measure.

The Chronicle since has learned three other potential poker clubs were approached with a similar pitch; one made a payment.

Mireskandari said he was performing legitimate work on an ordinance and speculated that Wilson made exaggerated promises to Prime Social about what he could achieve. Wilson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, whose officers launched the initial investigation into Prime Social and Post Oak, warned poker rooms still will face law enforcement scrutiny. Prime Social reopened Sept. 5.

The clubs argue their business model of charging membership dues and seat fees is legal under Texas law. Harris County law enforcement officials contend those revenue sources are the same as a club taking a cut of poker proceeds, colloquially called a rake, which state law forbids.

“We will continue to treat these as potentially criminal enterprises,” Acevedo said. “If we find probable cause … we will forward these, on a case-by-case basis, to the DA’s office.”

Generous donor

Mireskandari’s narrative of his involvement with the poker clubs relies on one central contradiction: He presents himself simultaneously as a financial crimes expert deserving of a consulting contract with the district attorney but maintains he was naïve enough to go into business with men he now believes are disreputable.

Wittingly or not, Mireskandari helped Prime Social connect with politicians in a campaign to build support for its business model the club later would use as a defense against criminal charges.

Mireskandari’s entrance into local politics began with Ogg, whom he met in 2014 over lunch at a Midtown restaurant, introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Mireskandari, who owns several businesses, had been a victim of fraud in the past decade and wanted white-collar crime to be more aggressively prosecuted. He said he was impressed by Ogg’s vision to do so and offered to help her campaign.

Ogg received $42,099 in monetary and in-kind contributions from Mireskandari and his wife during her 2014 and 2016 district attorney campaigns. The couple also hosted fundraisers for Ogg at their Tanglewood home.

Shortly after taking office in January 2017, Ogg hired Mireskandari as a consultant, for $1,100 per month, to help her office prosecute complex financial crimes. He was paid $18,000 through May 2018, though he remained under contract until Ogg canceled the agreement in June, the same day she dismissed the poker room charges.

She said Mireskandari acted as a liaison with the business community and helped reorganize the office’s white-collar crime division. Mireskandari never told her about his poker room work, Ogg said, and never had access to case files related to the Prime Social and Post Oak probe.

“I don’t intend to condemn him or exonerate him; I think you can draw your own conclusion,” Ogg said. “He should have disclosed that, and he should have ended the contract with our office.”

Mireskandari’s relationship with Ogg helped him connect with Democrats seeking election in the 2018 cycle. Candidates and campaign staffers described Mireskandari as an affable, well-meaning player who often mentioned he was friends with the district attorney.

With an associate, Mireskandari created two political action committees in 2018, Texans For Fairness and Texas For Fairness and Justice. Through July, the PACs had donated $299,000 supporting 55 Democratic candidates in local and statewide races, as well as the Texas Democratic Party and its affiliates in Harris, Brazoria and Galveston counties. Mireskandari contributed $46,000 personally to the PACs, campaign finance reports show.

“If they’re Democrat, then I could support them,” Mireskandari said, adding, “You’re going to have a hard time coming up with somebody on the ballot that, one way or the other, I wasn’t involved with.”

Mireskandari’s involvement included connecting candidates to other potential donors, including owners of the Prime Social Poker Club.

Middleton, the Fort Bend district attorney, and Nelson, the Democratic nominee for Texas attorney general, said Mireskandari brought them to meet Prime Social representatives at the club in late 2018. Middleton said he was shocked to learn of the businessman’s involvement with the club from newspaper articles.

“I felt betrayed. I felt like this should have been disclosed to me, and it wasn’t,” Middleton said. “I was physically hurt — depressed, even — when I found out about it.”

Prime Social co-owner David Nguyen gave $10,000 to Texans For Fairness in August 2018, the same month Mireskandari’s PAC gave that exact sum to the Nelson campaign. After the Chronicle brought the donation to Nelson’s attention, he said his campaign mailed Texans For Fairness a check for $12,000, the amount it received from the PAC in 2018.

Mireskandari also said he introduced Prime Social operations manager Dean Maddox to Harris County Precinct 2 commissioner candidate and former sheriff Adrian Garcia at a Memorial-area fundraiser in June 2018. Better Pain Solutions LLC, a company registered to Maddox, contributed $10,000 to Garcia the following day. The check was one of the few big-dollar donations of his nascent campaign.

Texas law bars corporations from donating to political candidates, but makes an exception for limited liability corporations owned by individuals.

Garcia, who won and took office in January, initially said he did not recall meeting anyone associated with a poker room. He later added, “I did not have any meetings with any poker room owners to specifically discuss legal matters.”

Mireskandari said he did not believe it was relevant to tell the candidates about his poker club lobbying.

One Democrat who defended Mireskandari was his brother-in-law, H.P Parvizian, who sought the party’s nomination in 2018 for a Houston-area congressional district.

“He is an upstanding guy, and I know whatever it was that people told him to do, I don’t see him doing anything unethical in any way,” he said.

Parvizian spoke highly of Mireskandari’s character and talent as a businessman, and said he was unaware his sister’s husband was working on behalf of poker clubs.

Seeking county business

Democrats in Harris County had a banner year in 2018, riding a “blue wave” to victory in every countywide race and judicial post. “I was in the middle of all of this,” Mireskandari said.

As influential donors sometimes do, Mireskandari after the election sought benefits from the candidates he had helped. His unusually forward style produced mixed results.

Middleton included Mireskandari on a volunteer panel to help screen prosecutor candidates for his office. Middleton would not have welcomed Mireskandari’s help, he said, if had he known of his poker club work, which he said was a clear conflict of interest.

“Hell, absolutely not. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with him. Period,” Middleton said.

Middleton said he has returned the $15,000 in contributions he received from the Texans For Fairness PAC.

Mireskandari, who records show provided free office space to the campaign of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, later sought her help to be named to Houston’s bid committee for the 2026 World Cup. After he was passed over, he sent a text message to Hidalgo’s chief of staff in April, which was obtained by the Chronicle, to express his “dismay and disappointment of getting the royal run around on the FIFA issue.”

Mireskandari told the Chronicle he was upset at being passed over for the soccer committee, for which he felt he was “very qualified.” He denied inquiring about other appointments.

The businessman also pitched Harris County officials on a plan to help relieve post-Hurricane Harvey dysfunction in the downtown courthouses by certifying a full-size courtroom he had built for county use. The building in Bellaire is part of a mediation firm Mireskandari started in April.

Mireskandari wrote in a June 6 letter to First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard that Hidalgo supported the plan. The county judge, however, said she never endorsed the idea or spoke with Mireskandari about it.

Soard said the county ultimately decided the plan was not feasible.

Enter Tim Wilson

Mireskandari said he met private investigator Tim D. Wilson at a restaurant on San Felipe in 2017. They were introduced by Wayne Dolcefino, the former television muckraker turned media guru-for-hire, who said the pair would get along well because, Mireskandari recalled, “we are both crazy in certain ways.”

Dolcefino now represents Prime Social, and at a news conference helped explain the allegations that Mireskandari and Wilson had scammed the club.

The son of Clyde Wilson, the famous Houston private investigator, Tim Wilson later tapped Mireskandari’s acumen with financial reports for help on several cases. Mireskandari said that in February or March 2018, Wilson approached with a proposition.

Wilson said he was working for a new poker club called Prime Social and its operations manager, Dean Maddox. The club, Wilson explained, wanted a city ordinance to regulate gambling establishments and offer larger clubs a competitive advantage.

Mireskandari said he believes Wilson sought him out because of his business background and connections with Democratic politicians.

“He told me he’s got all the Republicans covered on this, and he’s got his side of the story done,” Mireskandari said. “He says, can you get something like this pulled off?”

Mireskandari said he planned to build relationships with city candidates and pitch the ordinance, which would include parking and security requirements, after the 2019 municipal elections. He said he never discussed the proposal with any current city elected official.

“I didn’t have to talk to anybody about the ordinance,” he said. “My job was to get people, support candidates, so when the time comes, then I put it forth.”

Wilson paid Mireskandari $120,000, at a rate of $10,000 per month, the businessman said. Asked for examples of work product, Mireskandari provided a March 2018 email he sent Wilson and Jimmy Ardoin, a Houston attorney who represented Prime Social at the time. Mireskandari wrote he would review city ordinances for sexually oriented businesses as a template and “start working on a simple bill.”

His involvement with the ordinance ended, he said, after an uncomfortable breakfast meeting with representatives from Prime Social at the Post Oak Hotel in early December. Mireskandari said they were upset with Wilson and made him feel “physically uncomfortable,” so he left after only a few minutes.

He believes Wilson, whom he said acted as a middleman with Prime Social, may have made unrealistic promises about what they could achieve. The pair no longer speak. Wilson hung up on a reporter seeking comment.

After the poker club was raided in May, Mireskandari said he began researching Prime Social’s owners and employees and concluded that if he had known more about them earlier, he never would have worked with them.

It was then that Mireskandari said he discovered Maddox was arrested in a 2013 bust of a Plano-based sports betting ring federal prosecutors said handled more than $5 billion. Maddox pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of failing to file a tax return.

Club claims scam

The Prime Social and Post Oak poker clubs, Mireskandari contends, concocted a narrative in which he abused his relationship with the district attorney in order to force Ogg to dismiss the charges.

The owners of Prime Social see their relationship with Wilson and Mireskandari differently — they now say the pair’s ordinance pitch was questionable from the get-go.

So do representatives of three other groups who say Wilson tried to sell them on a similar offer.

They say they were approached by Wilson, with Mireskandari’s help, between late 2017 and late 2018. In addition to Prime Social, they included the Post Oak Poker Club and two clubs that never opened.

One was a lounge to be opened by businessman Ali Davoudi at a Midtown building owned by restaurateur Lucky Chopra. The other was a potential club at the Magic Island dinner theater off U.S. 59, which is owned and being remodeled by Houston physician Mohammad Athari.

In interviews, each group described a similar pitch: for $250,000 they would receive a city license or be protected by a city ordinance regulating poker clubs. Prime Social and Davoudi paid Wilson. Post Oak and Athari did not.

Mireskandari said he never participated in pitching any club, and worked directly for Wilson on behalf of Prime Social.

Zachary Fertitta, an attorney for Prime Social, said the only reason the club agreed to hire Wilson was because of Mireskandari’s connection to the district attorney’s office.

Fertitta said the club’s owners began to grow suspicious in the fall of 2018, seeing no signs of progress on the gambling ordinance, despite repeated assurances that a City Council vote was imminent. The council never considered such a measure.

Fertitta said the Prime Social owners concluded they had been duped after meeting with the mayor on Dec. 18 at Vic & Anthony’s Steakhouse. Co-owner Nguyen said the club delivered a PowerPoint presentation of its business model, and afterward he asked the mayor about progress on the ordinance.

“He started laughing and said ‘You got scammed; there’s nothing like that on the agenda,’” Nguyen recalled.

Turner, through a spokesman, repeatedly said he has no recollection of such a meeting and has never considered proposing a gambling ordinance.

Turner’s schedule for Dec. 18 includes an item labeled “private lunch meeting” at Vic & Anthony’s. The newspaper emailed the mayor’s office a photograph of Turner and Prime Social co-owner Brandon Jimenez that Nguyen said was taken at the restaurant.

“Mayor Turner, who takes photos with members of the public virtually every day, does not recall where or when this photo was taken, or with whom,” replied Alan Bernstein, the mayor’s communications director.

Three current and former aides to Houston elected officials questioned Mireskandari’s unorthodox lobbying strategy, saying they struggled to understand why a consultant would wait more than a year to even have initial conversations with council members about an ordinance.

Councilman Greg Travis, whose District G includes the Prime Social and Post Oak establishments, questioned why poker rooms would waste money seeking a city ordinance when the Legislature regulates gambling in Texas.

“I think it’s a stupid strategy and I think it’s bull----,” Travis said. “Why would you try to draft an ordinance when your big problem is state law?”

Around the time the clubs say they were approached, Wilson recently had emerged from bankruptcy and Mireskandari and his wife owed more than $300,000 on a loan they took out to cover delinquent property taxes, according to county and federal court records.

The Mireskandaris in 2017 borrowed $327,373 from Ovation Services, a firm that specializes in property tax loans. The loan consolidated prior debt Mireskandari had incurred related to unpaid taxes dating back to 2012 on the $3.2 million Tanglewood home the couple purchased in 2011. Records show Mireskandari since has taken on more tax lien debt: $67,710 last year and $73,558 in March.

He said taking out loans in lieu of paying property taxes himself was a strategy that allowed him more liquidity for his businesses.

Wilson filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2014, listing $2.03 million in assets against $2.38 million in liabilities. A judge granted Wilson a Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharge in November 2017.

Prime Social paid a total of $438,000 in consulting fees to Wilson between March and November 2018, according to invoices from Wilson’s firm the club provided to the Chronicle. Its owners want to be reimbursed but may have little civil recourse. No written contract exists between Prime Social and Wilson.

Nguyen said since Prime Social already had an agreement with attorney Jimmy Ardoin and his law firm, Jones Walker, there was no need for another pact with Wilson. Nguyen said Ardoin referred the club to Wilson.

“Ardoin told us this guy was the man, that he was going to take care of us,” Nguyen said.

Prime Social on Sept. 3. sued Jones Walker, alleging malpractice and accusing it of participating in a “sham” to help pass a city ordinance related to poker clubs. Ardoin in July denied any wrongdoing; a Jones Walker spokesman on Thursday said the firm had done nothing wrong and would defend against the suit vigorously.

Paxton connection

In addition to establishing relationships with Democrats, Prime Social said it met with Paxton on June 21, 2018, in downtown Houston. During the approximately half-hour discussion, the Texas attorney general said he did not oppose poker rooms in Texas but preferred them be licensed at the local level, according to the club.

A spokeswoman for Paxton said the office “has no records of Attorney General Paxton attending this meeting in an official capacity.” She did not respond to a request for Paxton’s schedule for that day.

The attorney general, in a letter issued July 6, declined to take a position on the legality of poker rooms in the state. State Rep. Geanie Morrison of Victoria had asked Paxton in January to weigh in on the issue.

Ogg said Paxton’s decision signaled to poker clubs they would not be pursued by the state’s top law enforcement officer and discouraged county-level prosecutors from bringing cases.

“What it’s done is, you’ve seen no action by district attorneys in the state against this,” she said. “You’ve seen no action by the attorney general against it.”

The same day Paxton issued his no-opinion, his campaign received a $10,000 contribution. The donor: Better Pain Solutions LLC.

Paxton’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment about the donation.

Mike Morris contributed to this story.

zach.despart@chron.com