Here is the official Lock Poker statement regarding what's been going on with Jose 'Girah' Macedo. If you're not familiar with the situation more can be found in the NVG thread here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...-scam-1079792/

Official Lock Statement

"All of us at Lock are horrified and incredibly disappointed by Jose's actions. Within 10 minutes of finding out about the fraudulent behavior his LockPRO contract was terminated and his account was banned permanently. says Jennifer Larson Owner/CEO "At Lock our philosophy is based on building a deep relationship with our players and at the core of this is trust, legitimacy and loyalty. Jose's has defrauded the players, the art of poker and the basic human relationship. LockPRO is a strong team of great people and will continue to find like minded, trust worthy, passionate players who will make us proud to be in this industry."

-Rizen

What a bunch of BS. 10 mins? What about when you caught him cheating the first time 3 months ago?

So do you expect us to believe that, per your original statement after Girah's disqualification after the Lock challenge, you audited his account and MISSED and $100K chip dump in the final few days of the challenge?

No, really. You went on record saying he was DQ'ed due to a rules violation (mutli-accounting) but won the contest fairly. Which is completely false.

So either you have an auditing team that's so bad they can't see a $100K chip dump (and ergo they should all be fired), or you lied in your original release after the challenge. Either way, you should come clean and apologize.

Wow that is probably the most lawyered up statement you could have made. And it really doesn't address the anything other than ya'll terminating his contract.


Seems Pretty Shady to me

FYP.

Typo, it was supposed to say 3 months 10 minutes

Lock, it would help if you would be transparent in this. At the very least give us the dates that someone else logged in and played on Jose's account and who they played against.

Hell, just give us all the HH's, we'll do the rest.

Is there even a Jose macedo?

I'm been reading somewhat and many people think Jose "Girah" Macedo is a made up, fictitious character.

Don't take this the wrong way people. Lock should handle the Girah situation swiftly and effectively. With that said....Why do you people care so much? Did he scam you out of money? Do you think the Lock company was helping him scam other people? Just saying ease up on 'demanding' to know what the situation is when you really have no vested interest in it.

-Zack Ryan

You really need someone to explain to you why people would have an interest in how a high profile poker site manged to "investigate" their own pro and find nothing wrong with the most obvious and blatant chip dump in the history of chip dumps?

It actually wasn't the most obvious and blatant chip dump in the history of chip dumps....it took nearly 600 hands and nearly 1 hour in time. They made it look like a real match.

The dumper had never played on the site before, they played at stakes almost never seen at the site and he "lost" 100K at the tail end of a "who can win the most" competition to a guy who was in the running for it?

I'm not sure what your definition of 'obvious' is, but to me, that'll pretty much do.

Let's not forgot that the owner of the account that dumped to Girah, the "SamChauhaun" account, was in the name of DogIsHead, who was certainly known to be associated with Girah.

This should have been obvious to anyone who did even two minutes worth of research into the players. The fact that they tried to make it look like a real match is just more evidence that they were trying to get away with it so that they stood a better chance of not raising any suspicions so that Girah could win the competition.

Okay.

+1

Here is the latest official statement:

"Lock is currently pursuing legal action against Jose so we are unable to make a substantial comment at this time. We do realize that ongoing silence can lead to people jumping to conclusions. What happened goes against the very core of our player based philosophy and we intend on exercising our legal rights in the most severe degree. We will keep you updated as things progress"

I'm not sure it's so much jumping to conclusions as it is expecting a site that sponsors a pro who wins and is then DQed from a contest to not cover-up cheating or lie about the situation.

That said, I'm glad to hear you are pursuing legal actions, and understand that you can't necessarily release certain details while such action is pending. Please keep the community updated as things progress.

Thx for the update RIzen we appreciate all you do.

I would agree with your first paragraph below if you changed the wording to 'intentionally lie'.

I realize you may not know much about me or my reputation, but anyone who knows me very well also knows that if I seriously thought ANY company I lent my name to was intentionally lying, misleading, or cheating I would resign immediately (and I have done so in the past).

Obviously if you look at the initial statement on the Jose DQ, the fact that he 'legitimately won' the contest is factually incorrect. He has admitted to as much, so I don't think I'm saying anything particularly enlightening.

That being said, just because a statement proves to be factually incorrect does not mean that it was intentionally lied about, and I think that is an important distinction to make.

As a player though, I understand that everyone has to make decisions about where to put their money based on the information they actually have. As I said in another thread, the most powerful tool consumers have to voice their opinion is their wallets. I know that it is our responsibility to earn that trust and business back, and it is my hope that as more information comes to light that we are able to do just that.

-Rizen

Fair enough. FWIW I have heard good things about you personally, and I didn't mean this as an attack. I just believe Lock has to respond given the severity of the situation.

Either Lock Poker lied or Merge/Lock security is completely incompetent.

Agreed - and that's really something that should be answered independent of any action that may be going on between Lock and JM.

Lock suing JM is all fine and dandy, but it's not really relevant to the question of how his actions could go unnoticed (or worse) by Lock security.

Things are rarely so black and white.

I've already stated above that obviously the part about the contest being 'legitimately won' has proven to be factually incorrect due to his own admissions. No huge revelations there. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to comment on that really or not, but I'm pretty sure anyone with any intelligence knows it's a forgone conclusion anyways.

So yes, taken literally what is quoted above, the two are mutually exclusive. I don't really think that gets to the point though. I mean I could probably dig through every post you've ever made and find things that are factually incorrect, and that doesn't make you a liar.

I guess by the literal definition it does, but as a player, the important part to me would be if there was any intentional misdirection going on.

I obviously cannot comment on specifics for this particular case at this time, but I'm sure as an intelligent person you can certainly come up with scenarios in which no intentional deception took place and security isn't necessarily incompetent.

-Rizen

I suppose it's also possible that Merge/Lock security knew about the chipdumping but failed to mention that when they got him disqualified. That would be somewhere on the spectrum of incompetent to corrupt as well, though.