Sounds like a movie.

lol if you think police in "Euro countries like Spain are so corrupt", name countries were police are less corrupt.

and this^

This is true but its surely worth a shot. After I started suspecting the hotel were involved I'd have hired a lawyer for protection and max accuracy in the information I'd receive from the hotel.

On a side note:

Me and my poker friend have been staying at the confortel about 7 mins from the casino. We also recieved a strange phone call at an odd hour which asked us when we'd be out of our room the next day, for cleaning. To which we replied with a detailed response. Also towards the start of the trip (which was around the time of the phone call) neither of our keys worked and we had to get new ones. One of the keys hasn't been working since then, but the hotel just told us that if you keep it in your pockets with "technology" I.e. mobile phone, it interferes and that's why they occasionally fail. Luckily, we both agreed not to bring laptops here and have been communicating on our iPads via Skype Facebook twitter on the hotel wifi.

Maybe this is a classic scam in Barcelona, that has been taken under as an inside job at the hotel at the arts and maybe further intel provided from poker players/people hired to watch players etc. I can imagine this being featured on the show "the real hustle" (uk program that warns the public if scans and cons), but this case seems as though they have been purposely been targeting poker players.

No it's not enough if the guys who installed the trojans knew what they were doing.

+N

Don't bother with any software like Kasperky or AVG.....lol

Get rid of your laptop like its a aids ridden whore..

OP learns unfortunate lesson that hotel security is in place to protect the hotel's interests. Most of the time the Hotel's interests are aligned with yours (the guest), but not always. Hotel security cameras and the footage they capture is the property of the Hotel. They have no obligation to share it with you & have been specifically advised not to share it with guests for obvious legal reasons. However, the police can prevail upon them to provide that footage. That doesn't mean the police will share it with you. Surprised they showed you the entry log, but sounds like it was for their own benefit.

The lesson to any person reading this thread is to call the police & file a report anytime your room has been burglarized. No police = no action.

Friend had strap of 10K US taken from room. Only other entry was maid service. Hotel was useless, but clerk made the mistake of telling him security found money in her locker, but they couldn't prove it was not hers. LOL, maids keeping 10K in locker. Called police. Things get serious & very friendly cop asks if there is anyway we can prove it is his money. I told him that every bill was new & stamped the FED reserve branch of a city 2000 miles away. Dumb friend who requested “new money” from his bank branch & then leaves it where the maid can see it got his money back, but no thanks to Hotel.

Horrible story. I was looking over the Trip Advisor negative reviews of Hotel Arts in Barcelona and a couple of quotes I found interesting. "and one colleague had a laptop stolen from his room." "complaints are dismissed with fairly brutal accusations of lying" "Had a sales conference here and had 6 thefts on street or room
Professional thieves throughout the city. Be afraid or don't come."

Can any of you computer security wizards please answer this one? I think a lot of us use cloud computing/data services and our exposure with this kind of Jeans-style hacking would be helpful. Please and thank you.

From Pokernews: Looks like hotel security and PS are being more helpful in Ignat's case. Also, have a suspect on video.

A possibly silly question:

Why wouldn't every traveling pro have a security case for their laptop?

For $100 or so it seems like a no-brainer.

To op, I would contact Ritz Carlton corporate management. While the local staff might not care about customer relations, Ritz Carlton corporate staff absolutely does. I would fax a letter to their president (Herve Humler) or email their Vice President of Public Relations, Allison Sitch (allison.sitch@ritzcarlton.com).

This is probably going to seem way out there but for someone who plays your stakes and travels, how about buying a camera and placing it in your room when u aren't there. It shouldn't be that expensive for u and u can turn it off when ur there (unless u wanna film the girl obv)

Extra peace of mind and if anything is ever missing you won't have to count on hotel

You need to go to the police to file a report. They're not going to do anything because you didn't actually lose any property and they won't understand the implications the way other online poker players do. But you need to file the report for future documentation.

Next step is to go to the local press. They probably won't be interested at first either, thinking that their audience won't understand why it's a big deal. That's when you explain to them they are getting the scoop on a real life version of a Ben Affleck movie opening soon at a theater near you. Your story that we all recognize as having high stakes just got a lot sexier.

A little bad press will get the attention of RitzCarlton who will put their head of security on it. He'll find out who the insider at the hotel is. Then heads will roll.

I think Pokerstars should insist on booking entire floors of hotels and not have their players randomly scattered throughout the hotel. Say for example Stars players take up 3 floors of a hotel then all Pstars would have to do is hire a couple of their own security to walk the floors and be given the authority to see peoples room cards if they see someone suspicious.

Barcelona pickpocket statistics

Barcelona crime figures

Sure 5500 police officers will fully investigate 6000 reports of an offence every day made by tourist..

Once you get the police involved, everyone else including the hotel and Pokerstars can and will just shrug their shoulders and say that police is investigating this.

Super sick.

Good luck Jeans, thanks for taking the time and energy to share your story. Hopefully the persons behind it can be caught and I agree with those saying get the laptops analyzed by experts to find out who is behind the operation.

Pokerstars seems to handle the situation awful. I'm kinda not surprised cause its basically the same way they often deal with multiaccounting and other cheaters in the highstakes games by just brushing it under the carpet (imo) and not taking proper action (link), while the people in the community with info mostly keep quiet (for lots of reasons, protecting friends, avoiding conflict or just apathy).

Seems like Pokerstars are a bit naive about protecting players against advanced forms for cheating, hacking and scams, live and online. And that such a big company could and should put way more resources into preventing the shady stuff going on in the online world (and I'm not talking about 2 friends colluding in 5$sngs but on the mid-highstake scene where the cheating is way more advanced).

They should investigate suspected cheating properly and lastly threat people like Jeans and others more serious and respectful when they report very scary stuff like this.

Ive great respect for Pokerstars as a company developing the online poker scene and saving FTP but they are the benchmark for the whole industry and as a market leader I hold them to a higher standard and I hope they start to take anti cheating measures way more seriously.

There is gonna be two 2p2 reps on the next stars meeting (link) and I hope they will bring up this thread and how they handled the situation with Jeans to Pokerstars.

Wow just an amazing read I will have this thread open all night to hear any new information.

Jeans, what a beautifully written post, seriously that was as if an author wrote it, and even more impressive given the circumstances.

Off topic


I have had 3 friends that were robbed in Barcelona by street gangs so a sophisticated network is not surprising.

+∞

LOL. Like any western EU country? Spanish police is corrupted / bit crooked IMO, not like like eastern europe corrupted, but still.

odwyer point of view:

Pretty obv it was an inside job, and them continuing to do it even after an "investigation" started on Jean's case is pretty telling they don't take it seriously and have been getting away with it for a long time.

I'm curious to see what Pokerstars are going to do, would be a huge joke if they don't at the very least disassociate themselves from his shady hotel. Even if it wasn't an inside job, the hotel is incompetent and negligent. Story was very well written, extremely spooky.

There are many pickpockets and theivery in spain. I once watched an operation unfold before my eyes involving three women. One purposefully collided with a tourist carrying a purse, another woman discreetly lifted an expensive camera from the purse, then handed it to a third woman who escaped into a large crowd.

You must be very serious when traveling abroad. Have two wallets, lock away technology, and do not display anything valuable. And be aware i think, that there is much organized crime in tourist areas of every country. Be cautious.

This. I got the chills reading OP, sitting in this very hotel at this very moment. Some ppl that are still around are starting to freak out about their laptops.

Fwiw Barcelona is renowned in Europe for organised shady behaviour like this and you are usually warned by locals/tour guides when travelling there. I know in particular there is a network of pickpocketers from elsewhere in Europe e.g Hungary, Romania, so don't be surprised if this was planned by insiders. GL and hope all gets resolved

One thing that always happens in situations like this is that there are different opinions afterwards about who said what and when.

So anytime something is weird and you talk to some official rep for hotel, airline, Poker rep etc etc use your damn phone.

It only takes a couple of seconds to start recording (audio) every single meeting secretly. You can do it in the open. Just pretent to send a sms or something.

A secret recording may not be useful in court but you will be able to say with 100% confindence what each person said.

In this case I would have recorded everything after the initial meeting with the hotel rep.