What went wrong? Where did it all start? When I was younger, I once heard someone use the phrase “his mom must not have taken enough pictures of him when he was a kid” and I couldn’t figure out what that meant. Then I discovered Dan Bilzerian and suddenly it all made sense. This guy screams insecurity. He seems to have centered his entire life around trying to make sure everyone else thinks he is “crushing it.” Remember that kid you went to high school with who always had trouble with stretching the truth? He was going to throw the Project X birthday party for himself had the weather been nicer that weekend. He had a Lamborghini in his original hometown before he moved to yours, but he totaled it and now he drives a leased Dodge Dakota. He got accepted into Harvard Law but decided to get a hotel management degree from Eastern Carolina instead because the parties were too good to pass up (sry if you have a hotel mgt defgree from ECU). Dan Bilzerian is basically that same kid from your high school except he grew up and he’s still trying to convince you of outrageous shit.
So what’s actually going on here with this guy? There’s no doubt he’s rich. And by rich, I mean he has a lot of shit and spends a lot of money. Can you be rich without being wealthy? Because if I put my arm around him and walked him over to the ATM and said “OK Dan I want you to pull out everything you got” I have a feeling he’d have a hard time coming up with $10k. So while I have no confidence in him having liquid I don’t doubt that he’s basically the real life version of Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems. Let’s check the net worth:
$200M it is. That number could have been anywhere from $500k to $8B and I honestly wouldn’t have batted an eye. I admittedly have no idea if these celebrity net worth sites are truthful. So how do you come to be worth $200M by posting pictures on Instagram? Let’s start from the top.
According to my research, Dan’s father did quite well for himself in the private equity game. What is the private equity game you ask? I guess it’s exactly what you kind of think it is because he was indicted on tax and security fraud in 1988 when Dan was 8 years old (I’m shocked!). Before fleeing the country to escape the law, his dad was worth NEGATIVE $140M and supposedly set up a trust fund for dan (that makes sense). So it’s unclear whether Dan started with a trust fund or had to dig himself out of a $140M debt. Let’s continue.
When Dan got out of high school, he enrolled in the military just like a lot of kids do. Except he didn’t just go for the Navy he went right for the Navy SEAL tryouts. Which is obviously very easy to do and I’m sure anyone that wants to try out can readily apply at www.navyseals.com/signup. And if you’re thinking that he is one of the many applicants that would get weeded out by the rigorous training program think again. This guy made it through TWO ENTIRE CAMPS AND THEN SOME. And to make matters worse he did so with broken legs. Legs. Plural. It’s not totally clear why his commanding officers made him do the seal training program 2.5 times, but all you need to know is that they admin-dropped him after his most recent pass. Basically, he’s Michael Jordan getting cut from his high school team but in a version where Michael Jordan was actually the best player on the floor and got cut because his coach hated him.
Snake truthfulness meter: 2/10 – I think there’s probably a slight chance this guy filled out a form or talked to one of those guys that come to your high school and tries to get you to sign up for the military. And then there’s a razor-thin chance that he actually did some sort of training program with a navy-affiliated group, but I would bet my life savings (which is more than -$140M) that this guy did not come within hours of being a navy seal once let alone three times.
After SEAL training and both his broken legs had healed, Dan looked to begin a regular person career for himself. He enrolled in college at University of Florida. Even though he spent four years there he didn’t get a degree (professor probably admin dropped him). However, he did learn how to gamble, which is exactly what you expect college kids to do with all that spare money they have laying around. And to Dan’s advantage, he says that the reason he was getting let into the poker games was because everyone thought he was a trust fund idiot. Which in fairness, if your father is down $140M then it’s very logical to assume that his kids are wealthy. Long story short, at some point in college he sold some guns for a few hundred dollars to turn it into $187,000 playing poker at the Bellagio. From there it was game over. The American Dream. That’s all he really explains so I assume he continued on a $199,813,000 poker winning streak to get to his current net worth of $200M. He discusses it in the video below right after he tells Joe Rogan about breezing through SEAL training.
Snake truthfulness meter: 1/10 – You can’t earn a living from gambling. It’s called gambling. One time my brother sent me a text that contained the most truthful thing I have ever read. It said “Everybody is down. Nobody is up.” There isn’t an argument to be made here and anybody that has ever gambled for more than a month knows this. Whether its poker or sports or virtual ponies at 2am, it’s literally designed for you to slowly lose money over time.
After the poker success, Dan decided to give acting a go. Things get interesting here. Is it really acting if you just play your real-life role of a self-appointed military hero who did like 7 rounds of SEAL bootcamp? Dan says he helped fund the production of Lone Survivor with a cool $1M investment in agreement for 8 minutes of screen time and 80 words during the film. After the film released and he realized he only appeared on the screen for less than one minute and got one line of dialogue, he sued the producers.
Snake truthfulness meter: 4/10 – I genuinely want to believe this is true with all of my heart. The thought of Dan paying $1M to live out his fantasy of being in the military just to have the guys on the set create fake scenes for him to star in has me lolin. I’d say it’s realistic that he wrote out a check under some verbal promise to be in the movie, but I doubt the amount of money and screen time agreed to. This is your classic case of the one kid on the AAU team that sucks but his dad paid for the new uniforms so the coaches have to strategically put him in for 3 minutes during the first half.
When he was 25 years of age, Dan had two heart attacks. In the below video he describes a trip with some fraternity brothers where he did the following things:
- Met a girl on the ski lift
- Partied at the lodge bar
- Had intercourse for the entirety of the night
- Resumed drinking and skiing activities after 0 hours of sleep
- Got a stomach flu and paid hotel guy $100 for Gatorade
- Bought an IV from airport medic and self-administered it on the plane headed for Vegas
- Gambled the entire night in Vegas before heading to the strip club
- Took exorbitant amounts of cocaine and viagra before another sleepless night with intercourse followed by Mexican food and sports gambling for breakfast
- Began suffering severe shoulder pain that could not be remedied by pushups
- Took a cab to the hospital and bribed receptionist with $10k to skip ER line
- Diagnosed with “holy shit you’re having a full-blown heart attack” by Michael Jacksons doctor, Conrad Murray.
- Recovers before having an additional “minor” heart attack the following day
- Verbally states the list of drugs he has taken for the doctor in front of his family which include marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine, and viagra
- Spent next 4 days in hospital recovering, having intercourse, drinking, and smoking marijuana
- Was prescribed with pills under the direction to take them for the rest of his life which he pitched after three days
Snake truthfulness meter: 5/10 – This guy is clearly delusional and needs help. Most of that stuff sounds like the type of thing I would make up when I was 12 if I was hanging out with 16-year olds to try and fit in. Do I think he suffered two heart attacks? Probably not. Could he have had a couple breakdowns while doing a bunch of drugs, not sleeping, and trying to maintain the 8000 domino-stacked tower of lies he had built that weekend? Definitely. For that reason, this is getting the highest truthful rating from me.
I’m not totally sure how it plays into the timeline and if he is still active duty, but Dan is also a cop. People forget that he was one of the first on the scene of the Vegas mass shooting incident. See the video below. I especially enjoyed the part where the other cops replied to Dan’s request to “give me a gun” with “get the fuck away from me right now” and “I don’t know who you are.”
Snake trutuhfulness meter: 0/10. I promise you he’s not a cop.
PS – during my research I think the lowkey funniest thing I came across is that Dan has a brother named Adam who has also become a self-made multi-millionaire by playing poker. What are the odds! You would think at some point the two of them would get together and go “Hey if my story is gonna be poker, then maybe you should go with something else considering that no two brothers in the history of mankind have ever BOTH came home from Vegas with winnings, let alone made hundreds of millions over a lifetime.”
i think dan represents the epitome of moral corruption in society but when you said “Except he didn’t just go for the Navy he went right for the Navy SEAL tryouts. Which is obviously very easy to do and I’m sure anyone that wants to try out can readily apply at http://www.navyseals.com/signup.” that is absolutely wrong in so many ways. First of all you have to enlist in the Navy first with a SEAL contract or be in the Navy and request to go.. however in order to get a SEAL contract You have to meet very high standards to even qualify like your vision, health, prior surgeries or illnesses, aptitude (test high on the ASVAB), psych evaluation, very intense background check to get a top secret security clearance, and then pass the PST which is 500 yard swim in 12 mins, 50 push ups, 50 sit ups, 10 pull ups, 1.5 mile run in 10 mins… Most people do not meet those minimum qualifications.. Then you go to Navy Bootcamp. Then you go to BUD/S pre indoc. then BUD/s indoc which is a 3 week course thats like a BUD/S warm up to prepare you and see if you can handle it.. many people drop from indoc.. Then you finally get to BUD/S which is a 27 week course broken into 3 phases.. just for reference on attrition rates navy boot camp 42%, BUD/S pre indoc 90%, BUD/s indoc 85%, BUD/S 75-80%… and Dan did 500 days of the most brutal military in the world when most people drop before ever even getting to BUD/S.. Yea I dont like Dan but I gotta give him credit where credit is due and I didnt say all of this out of respect for Dan I say all of this out of respect for all the other people that met the high standards and endured extreme hardship to even get to BUD/S and had the balls to do it.