Hostess with the mostess Molly Bloom lounges on a blue leather banquette for her ritzy photo session at the Sanctuary Hotel in Midtown. Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” plays tunefully in the background, but this unlikely criminal is caught up in the preparations for the shoot, so the irony appears lost on her.
Bloom, 36, who was busted by the feds after organizing highstakes poker games for A-listers such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire, Matt Damon, ex-New York Knick David Lee and Alex Rodriguez, is back in the city for the first time since being sentenced to a year’s probation for illegal gambling.
“That was the scariest moment of my life,” admits Bloom, in an exclusive interview with The Post. “I had that worst case scenario of jail hanging over my head.”
Curiosity about the notorious “Poker Princess” reached fever pitch during her trial in May 2013, but Bloom stayed tight-lipped about her top-secret card games and the celebrity hotshots who were part of the ring.
Now, after dodging reporters’ questions for months — hiding from the paparazzi and even turning down offers to appear on reality TV shows — she is finally speaking out.
Her bombshell memoir, “Molly’s Game,” published Tuesday, dishes on the covert world of underground gambling and reveals how celebs and billionaires really behave on their downtime behind closed doors.
They include Yankee slugger A-Rod, who, according to Bloom, “would always show up to games about an hour late.
“He’d send a friend in to survey the scene before he’d come in — to make sure everything was copacetic,” Bloom says. The suave third baseman was “OK” at poker, but was hardly an expert strategist.
Nevertheless, as Bloom recalls: “I don’t ever remember him losing.”
Turns out that while Rodriguez may have taken pride in his stellar bluffing technique, it was less skill and more star power that won him the big money.
“The rest of the table was in awe of him and that gave him an edge,” reveals Bloom of one particular $250,000 minimum Texas Hold ’em game. “This one Wall Street guy, who had tons of money, was totally shameless about asking for autographs.
“He was saying, ‘Can my kid get a picture with you if we meet you outside of the locker room after a game?’ So, while [Rodriguez] was there to play the game, they were there to see him.”
When Bloom first brought her game from LA to the East Coast in 2009, she was living as large as her players. Hosting all-nighters in upscale venues like the Four Seasons Hotel, she’d score up to $50,000 per game — from tips and taking a cut of the pot (which is illegal) — and raked in as much as $4 million in a year.
“We would go to Wall Street happy hours, we would go to clubs, restaurant openings,” she says. “Every time I went out, I had the purpose of looking for players.
“I had a full-time driver or I would take my Bentley. I’d have big houses in the Hamptons for the summer, taking seaplanes or helicopters out. I did a lot of flying privately to Miami. A lot of shopping.”
Today, the soft-spoken brunette is living with her mom and grandmother in the Colorado mountains — the millions, the Bentley and the helicopters are gone.
The government seized her funds during the FBI investigation of her activities, and she had to sell off some of her swag to help cover expenses.
But Bloom has no regrets. And she hopes she can parlay her underground dealings into a more traditional career.
“I would love to raise a fund or get some awesome empowered women together and put together an advisory board to get behind female entrepreneurs,” Bloom says. As she slips off a stiletto after the photo shoot, she adds with a laugh, “I am definitely more of a behind-the-scenes person, though. Ideally, I would like to not be in the public eye.”
Styling: Mindy Saad
Hair: Warren Tricomi/Mara Kadish
Makeup: Eve Morrow (using Dior makeup)