Wow. It's the first thing that comes up when you google Bryan Oulton. That's crazy. Apparently the murder happened in 2010 and the sentencing was just last year as you posted.

BTW, I just noticed that Bryan Oulton's LinkedIn profile has disappeared.

He killed her 6.5 years ago probably not relevant to this story

might not be but here's the headline for the story. kind of ironic.

Son to father sentenced to life in prison for murder: 'You are a sick and twisted individual'

oulton's father killed his wife, went to play in a poker tournament, called his son worried about the mother, then leads oulton to his mother's bludgeoned body. ****ed up sheet, man.

It seems highly relevant to me.

Guys, this is a sad story in Bryan's life and although people have every right to be pissed AF about this current situation, the two are not related.

Money is one thing, but I would hate to see something worse happen as a result of this catastrophe.

Not sure that should be held against the son, given this quote in the article, referring to the prosecutor's decision after the son's statement in court:

"Coleman opted not to give an argument asking for the life sentence, stating that he could not do a better job than Bryan Oulton did."

I'd agree that they aren't related, aside from what emotional impact such a tragedy might have had on the family and whether that could have impacted anyone's future actions.

I'm actively looking for proof that Sandy and Bryan own the poker room in Aruba. If anyone can provide this please DM me.

You can perhaps rationalize this once or twice when it's early on, unanticipated and well within the profit margin of the next event, but pretty quickly it becomes brutally obvious you're not turning profits. Seems like adjusting your income (rake) and expenses would obviously be necessary at that point. Otherwise you're not running a business, you're running a scam.

Instead, they appear to have ridden it out long enough to get to their main event and make off with most of the prize pool.

Hopefully that's not the case, and everyone is made whole.

Don't put the cart before the horse. Nobody has threatened to do anything.
I think your voice of reason schtick has played itself out...

Message this morning from Tampa Bay Downs Casino, one of the next supposed tour stops of the PPC:


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I understand how small frauds become large frauds - that's very common in these schemes. But that's all just a rationalization, isn't it? At the end of the day it's still theft - period. Whether the money was used on hookers and blow or not is completely irrelevant.

The ability to rationalize it and be naive about it (from the victim's perspective) is exactly why these people end up getting away with these things (and maybe even trying it in the first place). If you knew you were a part of a naive community that would rationalize your actions, doesn't that lower the deterrent aspect to stealing? I think it does and I want to make sure that's not the case here. Otherwise, these types of frauds will only continue to happen in the poker world.

I doubt they planned on not paying the final table members and just stealing the money from this event. That doesn't make any sense.

The ability for them to maintain their lifestyle was based on money coming in from this tour. Why would they flush that away for this prize pool?

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's not scummy I just think it collapsed simply because the new money < what was owed.

I am most definitely interested, but as a new member, my "private messaging" feature is not yet enabled. If you can think of another way for us to exchange contact information, I'm all ears. And yes, I now see that the PPC January calendar has been taken down.

Not a businessman, but I'm struggling to understand what the business model of this venture was supposed to be. Was there any revenue besides tournament rake? Were they getting paid by tourism interests in Aruba? Seems like a lot of hands would be grabbing at their revenue between host casinos, travel expenses, employees, investors, etc. I'm just wondering how this venture was supposed to generate a profit.

Go to "About the Forums" and make a post to explain why you need PM's activated earlier than normal. They might hook you up.

And this from the Hilton Aruba Caribbean Resort & Casino...


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I didn't rationalize anything and I am not naive. I simply described how I think this went down.

lol @ gentlemanjack, jared

Typically with a traveling tour like this, the host casino pays a fee to the tour and the host casino keeps the rake. That's how it works with the WSOPc.

My bigger question is what are the expenses of this business besides their own salaries, minimal marketing and travel? Like, if you see you're not making money off of it, your options should be pretty clear of where to cut down on expenses. That is, of course, if it's on the up and up, which seems unlikely.

I'm also curious whether the host casinos will bear any liability on this. It seems like the victims are far more likely to receive compensation from Maryland Live, Foxwoods, etc, even though they didn't perpetrate the fraud obviously. They did, however, lend some significant credibility to the PPC and they do actually have money, which the PPC may not. There were 26 stops and people have said the amount owed is around 300K? That's only like 11.5K per stop, and I know there were some repeat stops, but those casinos may consider it good marketing/customer service/public relations to settle rather than be sued.... Even if they're likely to win the case.

It's also important for the poker community to hold everyone accountable in some way, so that perhaps these casinos will do a better job of looking into things as much as they can going forward. I'll admit that I have no idea what that process has been or even could be, but whatever it is obviously didn't work here.

You're clearly naive. That's not even a question here.

I think it's pretty clear you're misunderstanding what he's saying. We don't know what the contracts were with PPC and the venues with regards to rake, prize pool, appropriation of funds, etc. If anyone is naive it's you for assuming what the contract entails and that the PPC is directly dealing absolutely with all of the appropriation of funds. Also, he's suggesting that the PPC was short coming into the tournament anyway, and had a shortage of cash for a multitude of reasons. Assuming that they were dipping directly into the prize pool is to say that the casino had a hand in the scheme as well- which is highly unlikely. Indirectly the PPC clearly was dipping into the funds. But your misunderstanding of what he is saying is taking a line that Mr. Hamby, and anyone else reading this thread, doesn't believe the PPC to be misappropriating funds.

A little bit of info that may help from public records:

PPC Poker Tour appears to be a fictitious business name actively registered in Florida, the principal of which is a Florida Corporation named All In Free Poker, Inc. All In Free Poker, Inc. is a Florida Corporation which I think is currently listed as inactive with multiple unpaid tax liens against it.

The principal of All In Free Poker, Inc. is Bryan P Oulton. Someone named Thomas P Swartzbaugh Jr is likewise affiliated with that Corp. (I assume that's the same person as Sandy Swartzbaugh but am not sure.)

Hope this helps all of the victims out there.

TheWacoKidd isn't naive at all. Perhaps you didn't understand the wording he used. Sure, the money was technically stolen. Sure, it may be considered a ponzi scheme. However, that does not mean there was malicious intent. It doesn't mean they had the expressed intent of stealing money for their own purposes.

It's quite probable that they simply ran a very poor business and commingled funds. They could have dug themselves into a hole which they might have thought they would eventually dig themselves out of but then passed the point of no return this year.

Nobody is justifying their action or saying that this behavior is ok or legal. What I took from what he said is that they probably weren't just trying to steal $300k from the prize pool and skip town.

*sigh* It's already been established that most of the entries were satellite winners. The funds were probably never even in Aruba. The majority would have been collected by PPC (from satty apps/casinos) ahead of time and never even seen by the Aruba host (Hilton).

Try and keep up

i agree with you there. you're thinking about this one dimensionally.