Agent Habitually Misreporting Numbers? / What is the best course of action?

The information I am presenting is all facts, followed by my suspicion. I have tried to keep everything as detailed and accurate as possible, and have tried to not bias any of the information to further my agenda. I have changed the names of all participants to protect their anonymity.

Background:
I do not have a well-established presence in the poker community, but the person I am dealing with has somewhat of a presence in the poker community in Macau. I have decided to keep his identity anonymous for now until I decided the best course of action. I have been a semi-professional poker player, mostly in mid-stakes cash game in Macau in the past.
I had left Macau and moved to Australia, and for the most part had not played much poker recently. In late-January to early-February (2017), a friend of mine (call him Jim) tells me about a mobile app, where by going through agents, I was able to play in very soft games for relatively high stakes. A different friend of mine (let’s call him Peter) in Melbourne had been playing on it recently, and I asked him about it and he told me he was finding success. With this, I was referred to someone I had known when I lived in Macau to set me up with accounts (let’s call the agent “A”), and I decided to give it a shot.
For those unfamiliar with how this app works, please refer to:
https://www.highstakesdb.com/7635-ch...okerstars.aspx
Jim asked if it was ok if he buys a 25% of me, and suggested I should also sell 10% to the agent so everything is smooth, and I agreed. After playing for just a few days on my phone, I had found the games to be very soft and was running good. With this, I asked the agent to withdraw my winnings (I wanted to make sure everything would be smooth with payments). He quickly paid out, and so I went out and bought 3 more devices to play on so that I could 4 table and found myself playing a couple hours a day on 25/50. On top of this, I went on to invite three friends on this app, and created a few more accounts.
When I started, Jim had initially told me the stakes were in HKD, and I had asked me a few times about whether any rake back was offered by this app, and he had told me no. In the coming days, Peter had gone on a very large downswing and had owed the agent money. He had a lot of confusion with the agent, as the agent was reporting losses greater than what he had expected. I was invited into a group chat with Jim, Peter and the agent, and Jim asked me to vouch for the agent. I had played poker with him in the past in Macau, and had found him to be fairly reliably with the few encounters I had with him.

Initial Incident (Occurred early Feb)
So, in this situation with Peter, at first, he had sold 25% of his action to the agent and Jim combined and won upwards of upwards of 200K HKD. Then at some point in the middle, he had negotiated to take 85% of himself instead, and then down swung to be overall down on the app. However, he had forgot to take into account he had 75% of his upswing, and 85% of his downswing. Unfortunately, the agent did not communicate this properly to him, and Peter had foolishly not recorded any of the deals or details. I had helped spot this issue, and Peter quickly realized the mistake. With this, he agreed the pay the balance due despite it still being slightly more than what he had expected (about 3K HKD). Unfortunately, I did not have any of the exact figures for this settlement as I was not involved, but I believe everyone had assumed it was Peter’s mistake.
After this incident, because Jim had handled the incident so poorly, Peter asked if he could do all the transactions through me instead. He was aware that I had created a spreadsheet and was very organized with all the transactions, as I had managed all the accounting for my own accounts, as well as the three friends I referred. He said he would be happy to sell me a % of his action, and we agreed on a 10% action swap, but I buy an addition 5% of his accounts.
With this, I went on to take responsibility for all the accounts (mine, Jim’s and the three friends). I had managed everyone’s reports, handled all the transactions, and acted as a middleman for everyone between the other players and the agent. At this time, I had thought everyone should be a winning player, and to make up for all the time I had to spend sorting through all the reports, I would be paid by having %s of everyone’s action.
After a few days, I then went on to find out that Jim had in fact the whole time been taking rake back from the agent for ALL of the accounts above, and I was given none despite having done all the account management. To my knowledge, the agent received 20% rake back from the app, and chopped it up with Jim. On top of this, I also found out that Jim lied to me and the accounts were calculated in CNY (a currency ~10-15% greater than HKD) He had done this so he could take a bigger % of all of our action in secret. (Please note: Jim’s wrongdoing was on his own. To my knowledge, the agent was unaware that Jim did not split any rake back with me, and assumed I had known the game was played in CNY rather than HKD).
I had been very mad, along with all of my players, and confronted the agent about all of this. In the end, after threatening to change agent, we agreed that as of Feb 12, I would instead receive the rake back. However, as everyone was doing well on the app at the time, I did not want to profit from my friends at no risk, and agreed instead to divide up any rake back received with all the players accordingly, and instead, profit by having percentages of everyone’s winnings. >>I did however, remain to settle everything in HKD, effectively allowing the agent to buy 10-15% of our action.
Over the coming weeks, I had won (total of a little shy of 200K HKD in my account), but all of my other players were losing. I had only given the agent a 51K HKD deposit, and all of that was lost with an additional 77K. After sorting numbers with the agent, I had paid him 177K, 77K for what was owed along with a 100K deposit. During this time, I had a lot of other commitments and stopped played on the app, but agreed to continue to help manage everyone’s account in return for buying a small percentage (between 10 and 20%).
Peter then continued to lose a large amount, along with another one of the players and decided to stop playing on the app entirely.

Where the Incident Starts (Overpaid Rake Back)
I then settled with the agent 1 more time in Early March. He had told me numbers for what was owed for each account, and with this, I worked out how much I needed to collect from each player. He showed me that all of the 100K HKD deposit was lost, along with a further 58K. However, he said he had collected ~22K in rake back, so the balance I had to pay was 45,770. I quickly sent the wire after the weekend when banks opened on Monday.
After this wire, Peter along with two of my friends all stopped playing on the app. I had settled all the balances due with them, along with including their share of the 22K in rake back.

A few weeks later, (with only one of my friends left on this ap), the agent tells me we need to settle again. I check with my friend, and he has continued to lose (approximately 91K) by his records. However, the balance the agent tells me is far greater: $117K. I look through all my records and they don’t match, and tell the agent there must be a mistake. He says he will double check with his accountant and get back to me.
Yesterday- The agent replies and says he found the error on his books. He tells me, last time when he had paid me, he had overpaid the rake.
He had paid me $22,538.00 in rake on March 14, when the correct amount was only $10,463.00. (This error was he accidently counted what Jim was owed at the very start for rake back before we renegotiated in Feb) I take his word for it, but I tell him I had already settled with all the players, and paid them out their respective rake back. (He was aware I had not kept the rake back for myself, and these players had all stopped playing). He asks if I can collect it back from them, and I tell him I am not sure if they will agree. I also think about it, and decide I should not have to chase people up for money after already settling accounts with them – and this would reflect very poorly on me and my character, despite not having done anything wrong. I end up telling him that he will have to ask for it himself, and I will not.

Where I discover his Accounting Errors
However, even with this 12K in difference, the numbers still don’t add up. According to my records it should only be $91,636, and EVEN IF agreed to refund the “over paid” amount, the total would still only be ~103.5K. (Not 117K)
ERROR 1
I ask him to show me the balances for each account, and he send me a screenshot of his Excel document. Right away, I notice one mistake. In the sum of the total rake backed accounts, he is missing one of them. By now, according to his own excel we have collected $24,341.00 in rake back, but previously in chat, he told me it was $23,716.00. This is because he forgot to include one of the accounts in the rake back totals. I point this out to him, and he quickly realizes his mistake, agrees, and amends it to $24,341.00. I think it’s a simple mistake and don’t think much of it.
----Error 1 would have benefited him $625 if I had not spotted it
ERROR 2
As this total figure included the amount Jim received previously he says the amount of rake back I should receive is:
$24,341 - $12705 = $11636.
He quotes this subtraction of $12,705 TWO TIMES. I tell him “ok”, but I need to know how it was split up among each of the players. He proceeds to send me a screenshot of a different Excel. This Excel clearly stats $12,075. At this point, as this is the second mistake, and he quoted this number twice, I get a little suspicious and find it hard to believe it’s a “simple typo”.
----Error 2 would have benefited him another $630 if I had not spotted it
ERROR 3
With this suspicion, I then look into how he came up with the figure, and notice that again there was a mistake. He had included 4 irrelevant account rake backs into his calculation, to increase this number from $11,597.25 to $12,075.00.
----Error 3 would have benefited him another $477.75 if I had not spotted it
At this point I become very suspicious and have to double check his initial number again.
ERROR 4
I look into his math, on how he came up with the explanation I had owed ~$117K, and it had made no sense. According to his own excel,
the combined accounts were down: $380,850.99
his “fees” for purchasing in app gems was: $9,599.00
I had paid in wire transfers: $274,472.00
And should collecting rake back (disputed number either): $12,743 or $24,341.
Bringing the total to (ACCORIDNG TO HIS OWN DOCUMENTS): Either $91.6K or $103.2K
But, instead, he sent me an arbitrary screenshot showing it to be $207,495, and with a picture of a scratch piece of paper, tells me it becomes ~$117K. I asked him for an explanation of this, and he still has not been able to properly explain.
---Note, the fees in the past I had taken his word on, but now am also questioning what they actually are.
----Error 4 would have benefited a grand total of $14,534.00

What I have done so far:
I confronted him about these mistakes, and suddenly, he and his accountant “had to go to dinner with family”
I then went on to take screenshots of all of these, and draft a long, well-explained document to him (showing with proof), all of the errors, my suspicions and asking for an explanation. After showing this to him, he had been very cooperative at first.
I also said bluntly, he has to understand that it is extremely suspicious, that he quoted me 4 numbers in chat when settling numbers. Then when I went on to investigate, ALL 4 of these numbers were off, and skewed in his favor. Some of them very blatant errors – I do not believe his accountant is this incompetent to make so many mistakes in 3 simple excel pages, and for all the errors to conveniently favor him.
I asked him to explain these 4 mistakes to me, he went through all of them. He quickly agreed that they were errors on his part, and went over them one by one explaining them. In essence claiming all of them to be “careless mistakes”, and he was at fault and apologized for his accountant being "unprofessional".
Furthermore, the daily reports and past transaction I had not investigated yet, and have requested he send the original Excel to me. I now obviously want to ensure I he had not “miscalculated” previous numbers, as I had trusted him, and taken his word on all our prior transactions.
Upon requesting these documents, he told me “his accountant is sleeping”, and would have to send me at a later time.

My suspicions:
As he is an agent for many more people’s accounts, I am under the suspicion he and his accountant habitually miscalculate numbers by small amounts so that no1 will notice. If this is true, he can easily be cheating his player pool of well over 100K HKD per month, without anyone being the wiser. However, I have no proof and cannot be 100% certain of this.

The Current Situation:
I am unsure what is the best course of action—it is a very complicated and unusual situation. I currently owe him money (I had assumed it to be ~91K), but without doing long hours of investigation and receiving all his true original documents, I will have no idea how much the correct figure is. I am confident that I still owe money (I am confident the amount he may or may not have cheated me is well under 91K).
Despite being fairly confident he has tried to scam me of manipulating numbers so they are in his favor, I still do not want to simply tell him to get ****ed, and go south on my obligations of payment. My reputation and character are very important to me, and would like to know other people’s opinion of the best action to take, and would prefer to resolve this in the fairest way possible.
PS: I have all evidence saved, and pictures documenting all of this. I am sure he would not dispute any of the facts I have listed. Unfortunately, I do not want to post any of this up as I am still unsure if I want to reveal anyone’s identity. Also, all numbers posted are denoted in HKD

#EDIT: Fixed a few typos.

Also, I understand that having no prior posts on this forum, it is difficult to take everything I had said seriously. However, if someone reputable in the community is willing to help out (preferable someone the frequents high stakes in Macau), I would be willing to privately send all my chat histories, evidence and the identity of the agent. This way, someone with more credibility can attest to all the facts I have stated.

Unfortunately, I am not yet ready to publicly out him as he has at least acted cooperatively so far. Possibly because he still needs to collect money, or that they were genuine mistakes, but it is very difficult to definitely prove or disprove whether these "mistakes" were intentional or not. That being said, this still makes him blatantly irresponsible at best, and a very well disguised scammer at worst. Due to his reputation and number of dealings, I had trusted all his "accounting" in the past without double-checking small discrepancies, and it is highly likely plenty of other people have made the same mistake.

To my knowledge, the person in question has a large amount of dealings in high stakes and nose bleed cash games in Asia. I believe it is in the best interest of the poker community to get to the bottom of this.

#Edit: Fixed typos

Update:
After accepting all of the "mistakes" I found in his calculations of what is owed to be his fault, he agreed that he should take I do not need to be responsible for chasing up people for refunds for him "overpaying" on the last time we settled the accounts. But he seems to still expect that I refund all the additional rake back given to me, as well as the one remaining player that I have not fully settled with.
Also, a little over 24 hours, he has still not been able to send me the original Excel document I requested. It is my suspicion that there are countless other "minor" mistakes in all the computation so he is withholding the document until he can try and hide these mistakes before sending it to me.

At first, he had stated "Just let me know whatever you need", so I asked him to send the original Excel in order to double check all our prior transactions, so I could investigate he computed the "results" for each account. He first seemed to not pay attention to this request and went on to explain how his other errors as "careless". He was very quick to send numerous cut outs of screenshots of an Excel document, but when I asked a second time for the original Excel he said, he told me his accountant is now sleeping.

Also, I forgot to mention, in all the past transactions, he had only taken a very small cut out of an Excel (being very nontransparent with everything), and I had simply paid him what was shown. (It was my fault for being too trusting and I should have looked more into it previously) However, due to him wanting to collect "over payment" refunds, he showed me more information than normal, and I matched up this information with what he had told me in chat previously which is where I found all these mistakes.

Honestly it sounds like you're pretty on top of the numbers and understand book keeping. Get all the required documents from the start. Unfortunately you'll need to sit down and go through them all since you're the only one that knows all the numbers. It's going to take some time. It sucks.

Once you figure out a number and show him you should pay the remaining balance. If he disagrees ask him to provide proof or evidence of his accounting.

I would also maybe have any players you have action in stop playing for the time being until this is sorted.

GL OP

Why wouldnt you do the accounting correct from the beginning? Please stop talking about it in general by the way.

Yep, unfortunately there are well over 1,000 sessions total played, and I'm not certain how long it would take go through everything (provided he does eventually send it all over).

I guess the question is:
1. If I find a continue to find a pattern of him misreporting numbers to under-pay or over-collect, do I still have the obligation to pay?
2. If so, should I be expect to be compensated for having to do all of this work. He has been earning money from rake this entire time (I'm not sure how much he gets, but he has given me 10% rake back after mid-Feb), and I was under the assumption because of this, he should have the responsibility to ensure his books are accurate and unbiased.
3. Also, with the payment, should I be expected to refund the "overpaid rake back" or not.

I had talked to a couple friends about it, and they the general response was that in light of this, I should just stiff him and chop up the balance among everyone that contributed to the rake accordingly. But they are obviously biased as they do not know him, so I am not sure if this is fully justified.

why is this a problem? tons people know about it anyway and I heard of several people grinding it out on 6+ tablets.

Played also there(PLOonly) and it felt pretty rigged to me at the highest stakes, heard the same from almost every guy I talked to also lately.

be careful guys

Update:
Agent has sent me an Excel will all the sessions listed. I have not had time to go through each individual session yet, but have quickly already found a few more mistakes (all in his favor).

ERROR 5.
As I pointed out in the previous errors, he first quoted $12,705 on the refund he wanted to collect, which I established should only be $11,597.25. However, when I manually sum what he claims should be refunded, it only adds up to $10,360.50.
---A further $1236.75 in his favor if I did not spot this.

ERROR 6
On 2/27, I had wired him $177,702.00. But on his Excel, it shows it to only be $137,184. He said this had something to do with a deposit and rake back (very confusing unusual explanation which didn't seem to be logical and tried to intentionally confuse me). But even if I take his word on it that there is some kind of logic behind this, when I look at 3/14 when I wired him $45,770, his Excel shows this correct number (despite the fact that rake back and deposits should then in turn, also factor this number).

ERROR 7.
When I went through the rake back amounts paid for each session, it should be given by the function X/0.95 * 0.01, where X is the result listed. However, when I did this and compared it to the numbers he came up with, a very large number he paid too little (by very small increments between $0.05 and $30 (with over 50% of them being the correct number. The sum total of the difference comes out to be $199.98.
---A further $199.98 in his favor if I did not spot this.

Unfortunately, I still have not had the time to go over each individual session, but one thing I did immediately notice is that half the winning sessions seemed to be ROUNDED DOWN to the nearest dollar, and half were exact figures. This error alone would also only account for a very small difference, but again, it is still in his favor.

I do feel that I can safety conclude, without reasonable doubt, that these "errors" were intentional, due to the sheer number, the fact they all would have benefited him small amounts if undetected, and the amount he has tried to be as non-transparent as possible in the past. But I am still unsure on the best course of action I should take knowing this.

EDIT: Also, when pointing out these further mistakes I detected, he acted like he was unaware of them and has agreed that the numbers I came up with are accurate. He also joked that he should fire his accountant for making so many mistakes, still acting like they are genuine mistakes.

if you can get your hands on the originals, comb through it for mistakes and charge him a decent hourly for doing it. Think it's fair to say you're being scammed, just let him blame something else and save face by not fighting you on repayment.

i'd assume there are some comp forensic stuff that can show the last time a document's been edited.

My advice to you is to find a more reliable agent. This app is not policed. It is built on trust system. Seems that the agent you are dealing with is no longer reliable. You are lucky he is taking the time to prepare all these spread sheets and working with his accountant to fix everything for you.

Yep, I am obviously not trusting / playing this AP with this guy as my agent anymore. It is just a issue of how much (if any) should I be paying of what is owed; should I honor my debt? should I charge him for the work I have had to do? Basically right now, people that were playing under the accounts I was responsible for would prefer I not pay, and chop up the debt with everyone affected, but I'm not sure on the consequences or if this is justified.

no you should not charge him for the work you had to do.

yes you should pay money you owe.

what answer are you looking for?

Update:
After going all of the numbers in his Excel, I have worked out the true balance that is owed, along with refunding my portion of what he overpaid in rake back a little over a month ago, and have decided to wire him the balance on Monday (Works out to be ~94.5K, well below what he tried to originally collect)
Agent has agreed that this number is accurate, was unwilling to compensate for any of the wasted time, and still is acting as thought all his accounting mistakes were "careless errors".
Obviously I will not be playing on PM through this guy in the future.

Apologies if you have already done so and I missed it, but isnt it time u outed the agent to make sure other people aren't being scammed in the same way?

what stakes did you and your friends play?

regs losing 400k on chinese platform against people that probably dont know rules seems beyond my imagination

Be very careful about playing on these platforms. Story just broke on Chinese Poker media there is a large "reputable" host, one of the largest from Guang Zhou, which has ran off with about $10 mil unpaid.

You still think people in China don't know how to play poker? besides, regs are putting put into a game that could very likely have other regs.

Hi agent

shot me a PM. Maybe I can try to help you out.

I'm a chinese in US now playing on this app regularly.

link?

heard it was closer to 20m.

but that's rmb now usd.

so 3mil usd.

Its true. The link are in Chinese. It was biggest games(up to 500/1000 with 500 ante). It was actually larger than most NL 100/200 games


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I mean assuming he did overpay the rakeback not all errors were in his favor. That being said u had all the leverage and a reason to try to settle for less. Typically in business whether it's right or wrong you rectify the situation (settle with him what is do) and then never do business with him and if you think he tried to cheat you the best punishment is destroying his reputation.

If you don't pay because he messed up a part of a service that he worked with you to rectify your reputation will be destroyed and is not acceptable. Back charging for work caused by his mistakes is typically acceptable in business but this is where you use your leverage to make it agreed upon by both parties otherwise it is not acceptable.