New Movie Documents the Wild Ride of a Northern Colorado Native
Days-long drug and alcohol-fueled parties, secretive high-stakes poker games with tables made up of business bigwigs, sports stars, and prominent Hollywood actors – life was moving pretty fast for Molly Bloom, a wild child from Loveland, Colorado, who back in 1996, was even arrested in her CSU dorm room by the Fort Collins Police for disorderly conduct and providing alcohol to minors. Bloom had several more run-ins with the law during her college days in Colorado, which only foreshadowed the events to come later in life, ultimately leading to her arrest by the FBI on felony charges in 2013.
Molly, the daughter of CSU psychology professor, Larry Bloom, had hopes of competing in the Olympics as a competitive skier, before getting injured, forcing her to quit the sport. Wanting to move somewhere warmer/take time off after receiving her undergrad, the NoCo native headed to Los Angeles, where she began working a slew of odd jobs to support herself after being financially cut-off from her parents. One of these included being an assistant to a real estate mogul, who had asked Bloom to help organize his weekly celebrity poker games at the Viper Room. After learning the ropes, Bloom decided to take things into her own hands, and began running her own high-stakes games in L.A. and New York. Things got hairy (and illegal) when Bloom began taking a percentage of the pot, upon being stiffed $250,000 from one of the players. The poker princess eventually opted out of this dangerous career path, however not before the feds raided one of her underground games and seized all of her money. Pleading guilty to running an illegal gambling business, Bloom was actually given a "break" by the judge, and was sentenced to one year of probation, fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service.
To pay off her debts, Bloom first shared her life choices and downward spiral in a 2014 book. Now, her crazy journey is being aired on the big screen in theaters around the world in the movie "Molly's Game," directed by Aaron Sorkin, and starring Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, and Kevin Costner as her father. Life is definitely more low-key for Bloom these days, who now lives in Cherry Creek and is figuring out what she'll do next.