A four-time World Series of Poker circuit champion who claimed last year to have been kidnapped by a Mexican cartel and held hostage for 33 days in an Ohio basement as part of a seven-figure extortion scheme has now been accused of fraud.
That’s according to a newly unsealed federal complaint reviewed by The Independent, which says 42-year-old George Paul Janssen, Jr., scammed at least 20 banks out of more than $3.2 million before he vanished, using bogus loan paperwork to obtain the funds.
Janssen, a Michigan car dealer with more than $440,000 in pro poker winnings, went missing in November 2023 – two weeks after state authorities revoked his sales license for falsifying business documents – then reappeared a little over a month later, hands zip-tied and face bloodied, along the side of a rural road in his hometown of Bad Axe.
At the time, Huron County Sheriff Kelly Hanson said investigators were unable to substantiate whether or not Janssen’s account of having been abducted was legit, saying only that there were “a lot of things that need to be looked into.”
Janssen, who was arrested on Wednesday, does not have an attorney listed in court records, and was unable to be reached for comment on Thursday.
The new complaint filed against Janssen in Bay City, Michigan, federal court may begin to clear up some of the questions surrounding the bizarre saga he recounted upon his return from captivity. Janssen withdrew large amounts of cash immediately before he dropped out of sight, the complaint says. Some surmised Janssen had been picked up off the street and robbed for his latest poker winnings. But, while the filing doesn’t explicitly accuse Janssen of fabricating the tale, it does suggest the actions of a desperate man at the end of his financial rope.
In August 2023, following a complaint related to a potentially fraudulent car loan at Janssen’s dealership, Bay Auto Brokers, an audit by the Michigan Department of State Office of Investigative Services found “discrepancies in his sales and inventory,” the complaint continues. It says investigators discovered that Janssen had used “the same fictitious vehicles in multiple loan applications,” without having ever paid off the original note.
“This was not the first time they found Janssen falsifying business documents and, on October 30, 2023, Janssen lost his license to sell cars in Michigan for a five-year period,” the complaint states.
Throughout October and early November 2023, Janssen withdrew just under $75,000 from area ATMs, and wrote himself more than $44,000 in checks drawn on his now-shuttered dealership, according to the complaint. At the same time, he told his family and various acquaintances that he had been “extorted by a Hispanic gang or cartel for the previous two years… and he had given them approximately $2 million,” the complaint says.
“The gang provided Janssen a phone and sent text messages of locations to leave money,” the complaint states. “Janssen left around $25,000 in various boxes during each of these events.”
On November 8, 2023, the COO of a Michigan credit union contacted the FBI to report a possible fraud, according to the complaint. She told agents that Janssen had deposited $1.4 million worth of checks into his business account, which were credited immediately, the complaint explains. Janssen then wrote $1.3 million worth of checks against those he deposited, which were subsequently returned due to insufficient funds, the complaint goes on.
Five days later, Janssen went missing.
A family friend soon found Janssen’s car, with $50 bills scattered on the floor, according to a contemporaneous police report obtained by PokerNews.com. The friend told detectives with the Monroe County Sheriff's Office that when they last spoke with Janssen, he had sounded “broken,” the report said.
In mid-December 2023, one of Janssen’s relatives contacted authorities to say they had received a handwritten letter from Janssen, according to the police report. The missive contained references to the names Kirby, Iggy, Daisey, Noah, Anthony, and Parker, which did not correspond with any known family members, pets, or friends, but cops realized that the first initial of each, when combined, spelled out the word “KIDNAP,” the police report stated.
While Janssen was missing, according to the criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday, the FBI, along with state and local law enforcement, learned about $3.9 million in bank loans taken out by “close associates” of Janssen’s, which had gone largely unpaid. At the same time, “[m]ultiple friends” approached the FBI “to clear their name[s] and express concern they had been defrauded by Janssen,” the complaint says.
One of them was Earl McKee, a longtime associate of Janssen’s who told agents that the poker champion “used their friendship to ask [him] to take out multiple vehicle loans.” McKee said Janssen paid him $600 for each loan he received, according to the complaint.
On Thursday, McKee told The Independent that he went to the feds with his suspicions, but he still doesn’t know whether the kidnapping was “real or not.”
“There’s been a lot of collateral damage due to what George has done,” McKee said. “I have a family, I have a career. I don’t need his problems, too. This was a shock to everyone.”
McKee said that Janssen appeared, in the eyes of everyone who knew him, to have “life by the balls.”
“If there was one guy I thought was doing everything the right way, it was George,” he said. “To find out otherwise, it’s just been tough to take. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”
Janssen’s son Connor also met with the FBI, and provided a raft of incriminating evidence, the complaint states. It says Connor Janssen had worked as a salesman at his father’s dealership, and was responsible for depositing checks into its bank accounts.
“Connor… knew his father was taking false loans and moving money with checks from bank to bank,” the complaint contends. “Connor described Janssen’s actions as ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul.’ Connor also took out loans at his father’s request… Connor also told Agents he thought his father was making the loan documents in Microsoft Word.”
Connor Janssen did not respond to a request for comment.
The complaint says no fewer than 20 financial institutions “were identified to have been targets of fraudulent vehicle loans between June of 2016 and October 30, 2023,” with a total loss – including the bad checks drawn on Janssen’s credit union account – of $3,289,834.
On December 16, 2023, Janssen mysteriously showed back up in Bad Axe, claiming he had made a daring escape from his captors.
“Following his return, Janssen told family and law enforcement he had been kidnapped by members of the cartel who held him hostage during the time he was missing,” the complaint states, without taking a position on the veracity of Janssen’s story.
Janssen is charged with one count of bank fraud, which carries up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
