So the terms of service is worthless in a legal sense?

WEC is the man when it comes to this ****. Well done, sir!

I think he meant that because LockPoker WASN'T the one's defrauded.

Seriously? I would think it should be obvious that the current legal situation in the US with regards to online poker pretty much hamstrings any attempt at criminal or civil recourse. The risk of exposing themselves to the extent necessary would be far more costly to Lock than not recouping a player's funds obtained by a scammer, especially when the player willingly gave the scammer those funds -- it's not like Lock themselves were defrauded. I think the courts would look upon such a legal action similarly to those cases you hear about where a burgler sues or presses charges against a homeowner for getting his ass kicked or shot, or tripping over some furniture. Until we have US regulation and licensing, I don't expect to see many online poker rooms voluntarily setting foot in a US courtroom or otherwise seeking the attention of authorities, lol.

Its our fraud departments preference that we dont have P2P transfers at all since its next to impossible to police properly.

I bet...It would also be easy to just shut down the site and eliminate the need for the security department in the first place.

Player2Player Transfers are an important tool for players and the sites. It is understandable that the sites would not necessarily go after players with the local authorities (but why not actually, I am sure the police may be interested in the crooks among them) or take on that responsibility. The thing I do not understand, is why, when faced with ample evidence, the poker sites do not work more closely with Mods of sites like 2+2 and P5s that work these transfer threads and are familiar with the scammers operations among us. Many of these people work hard to prevent stealing, with one hand tied behind them because the sites seem to harbor these crooks.

Basically, the sites themselves hide the scammers and allow them to continually steal from players. There are a number of serial scammers that have worked for years ripping off many players, and are identifiable by 2+2 and P5s. The poker sites could work with them, by giving up names, addresses, IP Addresses of the proven serial scammers, so they could be investigated and taken care of by those they try and protect the community. That would shut them down eventually. The sites themselves record all IP adresses and could immediately block/close accounts with scammers IPs.

This type of simple, easy cooperation, between the poker sites, and the people who help the general poker population stay safe from the outright crooks, would go a long way to shut down what has helped several who have made a career of outright stealing from poker players through trade scams, repeated stake rollings, etc.

I gave up contacting poker sites after contacting them so many times, then seeing the same, well-known scammer, with his regular account that had stolen thousands, back open after a temporary closure.

I support Player2Player transfers. But I am sure it gets old that several in this community work many hours to identify and stop these scammers, while the poker sites basically give them carte blanche to walk right in the door to steal at will.

Evidence may be mounting that this is indeed Justin Hominsky or a member of that family who has lived in Medina OH, and Minneapolis, MN.

After reviewing his tweets, I discovered a friend he visits, and his girlfriend/wife/etc. So I shot a couple tweets out last night....

@James_Gregrow FWIW your friend Justin Hominsky @jhomi6493 has been scamming people for years. Contact me for +Karma not hanging out w/crook

@jordannnek I hope you are not in conspiracy with Justin Hominsky @jhomi6493 or help him with crimes. His stealing days are coming to an end

@jordannnek 'Scam Artist on Revolution Network' Justin Hominsky http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19.../#post34139884 …

When I checked this afternoon, I saw that both Justin and his girlfriends twitter accounts were closed without reply.

I them sent this tweet to his friend

@James_Gregrow Wow, I make a tweet or two about an internet crook, and he closes his/his girlfriends twitter account @jordannnek @jhomi6493

My guess is, unless the whole family is in on the scams, which I would doubt, some well placed emails, phone calls may get people their money back from these people who live in a small, conservative US Town with a population under 30K and who all or many seem to have graduated from Medina High School.

I may be talking out of my ass here a bit, but since the crimes technically involve money changing hands internationally, if the dollar amounts are sufficient, would an international or foreign police entity have any interest? Not sure if notifying them would have teeth at all, especially if the criminals are Americans/living in the US, but the idea of being on Interpol's radar just might discourage a few of them.
Not sure, just sayin'.

Excellent suggestions and activity on your part, sir. Bravo.
I would highly encourage all those who have been scammed to follow WEC's example here, it is highly likely to yield a positive result.

Great post. P2P transfers provide a great service to players and likely takes a lot of pressure off the sites' payment processing operations. It would be nice to see them coordinate efforts with the mods of the transfer threads to help eliminate the ease of scamming.

Our security team is in constant contact with the 2+2 mods continuing to work to shut down these scammers.

Its the number of players who continue to not do their research and fall into these traps that leads the security team to wish we didnt have P2P transfers as we end up spending a large amount of time policing something we have no direct control over.

Since P2P transfers are here to stay we will continue to work with the mods as well as listen to any player accounts to stamp out these scammers. We cant stress enough though the importance of doing your research and taking every precaution possible in these situations as sadly there are far too many people trying to abuse this system to defraud genuine players.

IANAL, but for US people I don't see this as being very effective given the scale of the fraud in question. International courts have no binding authority within the US -- any international legal action against any citizen located within the US would require cooperation from US authorities to enforce judgments or extradition, which again would expose the complainant (Lock in this case) to the US legal system. Now if that person were to travel outside the US to a jurisdiction that honored an international warrant, then he'd be in for a bad day, but this type of petty criminal is hardly the type to be jetsetting around the world.

Yeah, that's mostly what I had in mind, if they left the US.
And some of the $ amounts have been into 5 figures total, so that's definitely some walking around money. Maybe not jetsetting, but likely to be on the lam at some point in time. Many are currently on the lam, according to certain people's detective work in this forum, or at least they seem to be. It seems unlikely that their criminal activities would be limited to scamming people on 2+2 - a thief is a thief is a @#$%^ thief, and putting heat on them is usually a good idea, even if it doesn't seem to be much use at the time.

Congrats, in the several years I have watched so many scammers run around here, you are only the 2nd poker site representative to ever make a comment in public or publicly assist with a helping hand or suggestion/comment for the problem.

Once, a PokerStars representative came into a scam thread, and called the thief in question a liar as to his claims, and he quickly settled the issue before us.

Of course, I have not seen every thread so there may be other instances, but not even close to enough to help make it harder than hell for these scammers to operate. Most of the time, it is left to people with no financial interest in the process, to weed out, and keep track of the career poker criminals.

To be honest most of it happens behind closed doors and I imagine its the same for other rooms. But its definitely an important part of being plugged into this community.

Its also important to note that part of expanding our support was bringing in some excellent fraud and security experts who are really helping on this side of things. Its important that we provide the safest environment possible for our players.

Y'all honestly think you can get legal action on something like this. A guy scamming people via online "gambling" lol no way they would end up shutting down revolution and merge while they were at it.