This. I don't understand why people engage with PS and their silly demands of proof when they bring some allegation against them with the consequences being banned account + seized funds. If you cant crystal-clear prove your position then the response should be "**** you, close my account + send a check, or talk to my lawyer."

With the asianflushie thing they asked him to get on skype + cam and do an interview--I can't see how they have a right to such an invasion of privacy based soley on 2p2 gossip. Take that **** to court and make them PROVE WHY THEY are taking your money with EVIDENCE. They can't randomly keep people's money, demand a full cavity search, or you have to sue them for it.
But IANAL just seems ****ed to me.

Sometimes

"Common sense and morality"

"Obsessive fetish for rules"

"Poker stars threatens my livelihood because I broke their rules on their site"



Major douchebag alert. Good job stars

unless you are in .co.uk or .eu you're regulated by kanawake which means you have 0 rights. Most rooms do the same thing and they can all get away with it as they are not regulated.

Im currently under investigation for "softplaying/teamplay" by a massive room. They are holding 35k of mine hostage(i prob wont ever get it back). The people i softplayed with play 5 limits under me and i have nevet sat at a table of that limit. The only softplay we have is similar IP(same isp) and similar login time(peak time) and that we know each other IRL.
Who am i going to sue? The government is kanawake's bitch.

I would never use an Internet connection that I don't personally control for sensitive activities. That's very insecure and a bad security practice. A VPN and/or RDP can greatly increase security and protect information while using an insecure connection.

Maybe I don't understand something but I don't see why you couldn't sue a company for stealing your $ just because they're regulated by kanawake gaming commission or w/e.

Don't get me wrong I would definitely think PS has enough evidence on OPs location or some clear breaking of a reasonable TOS article that would hold up in court, but they might not, and it certainly doesnt mean they always do or that people don't shoot themselves in the foot when dealing with PS and these investigations. There's not a single change PS had enough evidence for the asianflushie thing but he ****ed up and played their little investigation game. I mean what would they have said--2p2/joeyingram podcast gossip and he would skype cam us? I mean if they held the $, got sued by the player, I would think their under the obligation to prove their position not the other way around. But again IANAL.

Fwiw there's a large group of South Florida poker players grinding on Stars on the reg, none of them think they are doing anything wrong and they feel they have this inalienable right to play on PokerStars whenever, wherever. "What else am I supposed to do? My real account got banned" is a common response/justification. They've been caught before, they've been banned, they'll get caught again, but they will keep on playing.

Jake is probably just mostly perturbed over the fact he used his own name, they seized a live score, they seized 250k, and that he knows plenty of people playing on their 3rd, 4th names who haven't suffered anywhere close to this.

If Stars were to ever become US regulated could they have a right to pursue fraud charges/breaks of ToS on past cases?

Would be pretty cool

In the case of PokerStars, it is the Isle of Man.

Why would you do this without talking to a competent computer professional? Software installed on your RDP server, such as the pokerstars client, can list incoming client connections and find out your client IP address.

In no way was this ever a prudent idea where you had a reasonable chance of escaping detection.

If you use a VPN it's trivial to ensure that connections to pokerstars are blocked when the VPN is not enabled. If your VPN is set up properly at least you can have some plausible deniability.

Reading most of these posts was less productive than i originally anticipated. Stars emailed back and forth with me for a year and my account and its funds have "officially" been seized for around 4 months now.

The 100k euro score I had in Barcelona was from last seasons EPT. I bought in with my stars account and put the live score back into my stars account.

Stars has no proof that I played online in the US. I played on a RDC but in their eyes, that has been reason enough to lock my account and seize funds despite contrary proof. I have given them countless evidence in the form of documents that validate my innocence.

So I assume you did play Poker Stars in the US, but can't admit it in this thread.

Why were you using an RDC ?

Jake, why did you anticipate everyone would be on your side?

It's clear that you don't want to answer the question of if you were playing within the USA. This is not a good look. This does not bring much sympathy from 95% of people.

You sound very, very guilty. If you wanted you could post here detailing where in Canada you were living. Just a few rental receipts is clever, but realistically proves nothing for you.

Why not post exactly where you have been living from/playing from since BF? Why use a remote desktop for six months?

All you keep saying is that, in your opinion Stars doesn't have enough proof to ban you and confiscate your money. How about you cut the bull**** and just tell the truth of what happened in a detailed manner?

The general cliffs of your OP are more that you're more angry that other people don't get caught or about how stars handles other cases than about your actual innocence. This is a problem.

So despite your account being restricted and you going through a lengthy back and forth of emails, you still went to the PCA in 2015. I see you at least played the $100k hi roller.

How did you buy in for 100k and how did they pay you out your 185k for 9th?

I guess sucking up didn't work either....

It's a wild guess but perhaps if you stopped your blatant lying and admitted from the go that you played from the land of the free you'd get more sympathy and more productive replies. Most people here feel for US players but you were just too much of a dick throughout your few posts.

They have a reasonable suspicion. Almost nothing can be proven to 100%, there can always be made ridiculous excuses, e.g. you could shoot someone in front of a dozen people and claim it was a doppelganger, now have them prove the nonexistence of the doppelganger...

If the suspicion is strong enough you'll either have to show the relevant document (which so far you did not, you just lied that it's not available anymore) or you keep refusing and get the judgement you deserve.

If OP did play from the US, and if he truly does plan on pursuing this with the gaming commission and through other legal means, he can't possibly admit to it. If that's the route he plans to go, the only purpose I can see for this thread is to gain sympathy and put pressure on Stars. That's obviously failed. The only way he could admit to anything is if he were to change tactics and decide to play the "yes I did it, but confiscating $250 K is excessive" angle. In that case, the thread could be useful to him once again.

If OP didn't play from the US, well, he's done an extremely poor job of presenting his case here.

I imagine he is unhappy with the responses here because in his own group of friends this is completely normal, loads of American's live in the us and vpn/remote desktop through other countries, so he wasn't expecting these types of responses at all.

To all the guys saying that PokerStars has to provide proof:

Who says they don't have proof? If he takes them to court, they will have to provide proof.

He says he is talking to lawyers. I assume those lawyers told him that he'd probably be wasting his time since he is obviously guilty and Pokerstars does have proof. There is NO way any lawyer hasn't adviced him to shut up publicly (as in: in a 2+2 thread) until this is sorted out.

So my guess is: He went to a lawyer, they asked him whether he was guilty or not, got the same response we got, told him there's no chance, and then he decided to come here. Tough luck.

I can understand why the account was banned, if he was in fact playing from the states, but why would they steal 250k from him? Just to discourage others? Stars just keeps the money?

If stars has no proof he was logged in from usa, seems like an easy win for any lawyer. OP should lawyer up and stop posting in this thread. Good luck OP, hope you get your money back.

Also this, no less than 5% of wcoop main field was playing in usa.

With this case, it's within their ToS and probably enforced because of the agreement with the DoJ. Bad analogy, but drug dealers usually do not get to keep their money either when they get busted.
In similar cases, Stars has donated the money to anti-gambling addiction charities, I assume that's what they are going to do here aswell.

If I were one of those, I'd be very scared now.

Jake says he has provided some proof that he was outside US ,but admits he was still using a VPN /remote set up - .lord knows why anyone would but anyway.
As we cant see any of the documents Jake sent or the proof that PokerStars has, we have to assume that "Occams Razor " philosophy rules here- That is that Stars does not believe or has proof that counters Jake's claims.
Other posters in this thread have stated that they had the same claim made against them and that the matter was resolved in their favor within a short & reasonable time frame (3 weeks in 1 case) Jake has said that this has been ongoing for near a year & over 50 emails went back and forth- This would imply that the matter was well debated and Jake simply came up short in his defense.I don't think it shows that Stars just jumped on the account and told Jake to go shove off.Stars would not want to be "outed" by a Pro with a decent profile like Jake if they weren't sure that they were 100% in the right ,especially with entry back into the US market (NJ) pending . I like Jake but it would seem that he has made a silly choice here , got caught & now paying a very large price for it.My own opinion is that a life ban on top inc live events is ott and only encourages the banned party to further cheat the system by creating a new account. For a 1st offence I would think a limited ban eg 6 months to 1 year is more fitting .
How does this compare to the recent actions by Hastings where players did suffer as a result of his actions and how do the penalties compare in your eyes ?

You sound in the same situation. You got caught, but they can't 100% proof it.

Assumption. Other than that, good post.

I think it's safe to assume that there must be something else. Pokerstars just banned a 100k BI highroller participant for life. There are not too many of those.

It's likely that either there is something else that was fishy or OP lied so blatantly to the investigators/misbehaved that this has become personal.