A billion-dollar-a-year gambling ring has been busted in New York City and 27 people have been arrested.

Those taken in by the NYPD include a professional baseball scout as well as a high stakes poker player.

Orchestrated via a website called Playwithal.com the illegal betting scheme which left thousands of unlucky punters broke was run by 52 year old poker player James Giordano.

In 2005 a break came in the case when investigators hacked into a laptop that Giordano had left in a Long Island hotel. As a result of the findings he was arrested in November by FBI agents at his extravagant Florida compound.

The scheme used the website as a king of middleman but it was through this chain of operations that it made it’s money. Sports bets were made through bookies who would assign punters a secret code to track their wagers and monitor point spreads and results through the website.

Ring leader Giordano as well as the other involved allegedly laundered “untold millions of dollars” using shell corporations and bank accounts in places such as Switzerland and the Caribbean in this complex and hugely ambitious illegal project.

Gambling records, computers and hundreds of millions of dollars in property were discovered when FBI agents searched properties owned and used by the group.

Also seized was an original artwork by Salvador Dali as well as other priceless gems.

All information about the gambling ring was kept on Giordano’s laptop. In June he attended a family wedding at a hotel in Nassau County. In the three hours Giordano and his wife were at the wedding investigators entered the hotel room where the laptop was left and made a digital copy of the hard drive without his knowledge.

It was this vital information which allowed the arrests to take place and meant one of the biggest scams in recent gambling history was smashed.