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Marafioti, a 33-year-old Toronto native who reportedly won multiple millions in his poker-playing career, had a very public battle with his demons. Recent social media posts were filled with an insistence that “social justice” gangsters were after him as he fought in court to gain joint custody of his young son.
Shortly after 11 a.m. last Friday, Marafioti dove head-first to his death from a friend’s 28th-floor balcony at the Winston Towers, a Bergen County high-rise above the Hudson River in Cliffside Park, authorities confirmed.
Marafioti was staying with his friend at 200 Winston Drive after a breakup forced him to move from his apartment overlooking the George Washington Bridge in neighboring Fort Lee, those who knew him said.
He apparently thought his perceived pursuers "were coming to get him” when he panicked and jumped, a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the incident told Daily Voice.
Two young lifeguards were alone at the pool next door at 100 Winston Drive, the official said, when they heard Marafioti's screams, then saw his body. Both were later offered counseling.
Responding officers reported finding the door to the upper-floor apartment open. Stuffed into bags was $24,000 of Marafioti’s cash, they said.
The fears of Marafioti's fellow players had horrifically come true.
“It’s clear that Matt had been struggling with some major mental issues for quite some time,” one told Daily Voice. “Most of us haven't heard from him in days. He's usually posting somewhere about something and that stopped [on Friday].
“He was a very smart man,” Marafioti’s friend said. “It's really amazing how a mind so brilliant in poker could go off the rails like that.”
A Catholic high school graduate, Marafioti developed his game online at 19 before leaving college and moving seriously into real-life poker.
He emerged as a high-stakes player in 2007, finishing in front at his first live tournament, the Empire State Hold ’Em Championship at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, NY. The take: $198,473.
Marafioti was considered part of a controversial new breed -- brash, arrogant, a potty mouth, as one interviewer described him. He also once published a blog in which he proudly listed, and described, some of the largest hands he'd lost.
SEE: A member of the notorious new breed of young poker pros who are winning—and losing—millions (Toronto Life)
Marafioti, who insisted that he was misunderstood, later became known more for troubling social media posts, as well as a public breakup with former poker pro Lauren Kling.
Fellow players had assumed Marafioti’s death once before. He’d gone missing without a trace in 2016 but then resurfaced after 45 days, according to industry accounts at the time.
He’d become more demonstrably disturbed, they said.
Marafiota, who played at tournaments in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Aruba, the Bahamas and Europe, told interviewers that he set out to become a personality but ended up a victim. He once claimed that a failed reality show pilot that he'd produced and starred in became an opportunity for others to rip him off.
“I've obviously been heavily taken advantage of and it's caused me a lot of pain,” Marafioti said, attributing his projected cockiness to personal insecurity during a June 2015 interview with pokerlistings.com.
SEE: Matt Marafioti Defends Himself Against Negative Public Opinion
Asked about his paranoia, Marafiota spoke of people who will “destroy you in any way they can, make up lies about you or whatever the case may be. When you give people a chance to take advantage of you, they will.
“I think I need to redefine who my friends are and sort of start over,” he told the interviewer.
Marafioti took to Instagram in the days, weeks and even hours leading up to his death last week. He wrote of a “shadow organization” that was out to get him – in part, because of the custody battle. He posted letters and court documents, as well as excerpts from a text exchange he had with his father.
His dad, who'd once been his business manager, told Marafioti that “all is well” and that he was suffering from a “figment of the imagination.”
His son wasn’t buying it, though.
“I will be the one who is ultimately punished while everything I say and all the evidence is overlooked as the authorities pretend they don’t know what’s going on,” Marafioti wrote. “I am being entrapped, gang stalked, harassed, and set up for murder.
“They are somehow going to attribute this to my ‘mental health’ instead of a social justice movement funded by incredibly powerful people which can’t be revealed because it’s completely dehumanizing and unlawful in nature.”
In one of his last posts, Marafioti said a “set up” apparently was arranged “to make it look like I disappeared before the court case to me to avoid exposing the whole Illuminati through factual evidence.
“The true intention of this set up, to destroy/end me, not to share custody of a child that I was a stay at home father to, and his sole financial provider, or protect myself from someone who I share that child with involved in an outright criminal conspiracy to murder me which is why I had to uproot my own home in the first place and vocalize this or I would be dead already,” he wrote.
In his final post, Marafioti claimed that he was being abducted by his friend at the Winston Towers. Police investigated the claim and said it wasn’t true.
Friends were saddened by the news.
“I knew Matt from the time he was a baby and up until his teens and poker days,” one commented on Instagram after learning of Marafioti’s death. “[H]is charisma, warmth, sensitivity and intelligence are how I’ve always, always thought of him. He has a wonderful family, beautiful parents, and he is a human being with all of the love inside his heart and also the vulnerabilities we all have.
“Life is not easy,” she added. “This is a man with a brilliant mind and big heart who I’ll always remember with so much love and respect, and this is a man whose profound love of his son is evident through all of his posts.”
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The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call: 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Or text CONNECT to 741-741.You are not alone.
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