I feel bad for fakelogic, and I don't like victim shaming, but I gotta say that EastCoastBalla is correct here.

It is unbelievable that fakelogic or anyone else continued trusting/backing Zo after the super-obvious "lost backpack full of cash" scam.

Like, I believe it, but it's still unbelievable.

amazin how long this guy kept lying to his backers, and even more impressive how they kept believing him.

Well I have to stick up for fakelogic in that case.

I was in near daily contact with Zo back in 2013 and he is the stereotypical pothead. Now listen up, I am a giant pothead myself and hate the stereotype that is being portrayed. But in the case of a few people it's true, Zo is one of those people.

He would super late for coaching sessions he scheduled. (more than 15mins) He would regularly have to skip back actions in hands when doing HH reviews because he forgot what the turn action was. He would regularly quit halfway through a HH review and then forget to write down where we left off. The only constant during 2 to 3 hour long skype calls where his lighter, a cough and eating sounds.

I would never have trusted him enough to give him a loan, let alone stand a backing deal. But if I did, I wouldn't really think it would be impossible for him to lose a backpack with more than his net worth inside.

Poker players as a generalisation, in my experience are a little below the average intelligence of most other "professions", e.g. school teacher, plumber, accountant when it comes to common sense general life skills. They are very clever at playing poker and abstract analysis, but often a little deficient in other areas of practical day to day life intelligence.

~90% of non/late paying excuses are transparently total BS, "I lost my phone" being a commonly used one, or "I didn't have Internet access". Anyone genuinely losing their phone would get a replacement within 48 hours and Internet access is everywhere.

So besides being a very mediocre poker player, he was also a drug addict, and very unreliable? Amazing how pretty much anybody can get staked with 25% markup. I'd think the only guys that would actually be +EV to stake in live mtts with 25% markup would be online guys who are seeing a ton of hands on stars, and are studying religiously.

Who the **** is still giving out money to people they don't know? Are you ******ed? Dude shoulda lost more imo.

They weren't handing out cash to some nobody who posts on 2p2 they were giving it to a guy with $1.6M in winnings.

There's a big difference there.

Lol so idiotic to think 1.6m in winnings means anything more than nothing at all!

Guess I'll indulge NVG here and defend my honor a bit, lol.

First of all, all of you guys saying that I was fooled by the backpack bit (which I don't disagree with), I'd still like to know what you guys would've suggested I did. What would getting a police report, making accusations without any evidence, or publicly telling people my suspicious have done? Materially, nothing. You guys are mixing up the timeline and confusing the fact that I knew before the backpack incident he was capable of something like this and after the fact whether I should have been financially involved with him at all. You can argue that I maybe have been naive after that, but it just wasn't that reasonable to assume this guy was seriously capable of stealing 20K from me.

Even if the backpack thing went down in somewhat sketchy circumstances, he readily admitted he owed me that debt. Also consider what our staking deal was. Staking, to some degree, is freerolling someone at the cost of a percentage of their ROI. And by not giving up on him, I was giving him a consistent stream of potential scores from poker. Is it reasonable to assume that a person given that opportunity would just keep doing highly sketchy things or steal from me, especially considering the type of poker players he was close friends with? Again, I argue it is not reasonable. It's almost as unreasonable to as assuming someone would oversell the main to all these other pro poker players and then cash it.

So yes, in hindsight, it's easy for everyone to know he is an unreasonably shady and desperate person that would do these things.

Furthermore, keep in mind he did this to close friends, who are way more experienced and connected in the poker world than me, including people like Matt Glantz. I won't name names of the other affected individuals, but if you knew who Zo got and the details of how he got them, you would have a hard time arguing it wasn't at least somewhat reasonable for me to try and continue to invest in Zo while he was in makeup. Many of them knew about the this same backpack story and had insight to his daily life way more than I did, with more potential red flags to be seen, and they STILL loaned/invested many thousands of dollars with him. Remember, the known outstanding debts are $150K, my $20K is just a small fraction of that.

So this guy was in 5 figure makeup to me after the backpack story, and whether right or wrong, I believed he could still profit for me poker-wise. Feel free to criticize me for continuing a stake with him, but I decided making a new deal would rectify the situation over time. And fortunately, I did recoup a tiny amount--so he didn't "get" me for more. Of course, now that way more facts are known, I believe he owes me a lot more. But just like the backpack story, just knowing that really doesn't do anything despite what all of you guys are claiming.

The fact that as you said he was on twitter flirting with models soon after the backpack thing supposedly happened, yeah that was more than a little suspicious. Any normal person who loses 20k or more would not be doing that. Plus no police report and you said he wasn't giving you receipts if I recall.

C'mon man, who cares who the guy's friends are. Look at Erick Lindgren. He is friends with Daniel Negreanu. Still is from what it looks like. But it didn't stop him from screwing tons of people over.

Feel bad for you but honestly, it still is ridiculous that you continued to feed Zo money after he 'loses' your money. You were gullible and an easy mark. But whatever, there are lots of easy marks it seems in this gambling environment.

Alright, seems you just don't get my argument, so this will be my last post on the subject, but I'll sum up your argument:

Poker pro A backs poker pro B.
Poker pro B loses money from poker pro A and readily admits he owes it.
Poker pro A is an easy mark.

Guess virtually every poker pro in the world who has money owed to them is a gullible and easy mark then. Congrats to the rest of you.

Carry on NVG.

I sympathise with fakelogic as he staked a player in good faith, giving him a shot at the big time, and was (allegedly) cheated and deceived.

An error made by many players is believing that there are "friends" in poker. One of the biggest fallacies ever. With a few rare exceptions there are very, very few true friends in poker, it is all about money, pure and simple.

When someone owes money, or is no longer a useful source of money, or a viable equity swap, they cease to be a friend. This is not how *genuine* friendship works.

I think you are missing the point. You staked him fine, happens all the time. Guy you staked comes up with convoluted and ridiculous story about a lost backpack in a highly secured area like an airport. Just so happens the backpack contains lots of your money. And you don't even ask to see a copy of the police report, backer is on twitter soon after like he doesn't have a care in the world flirting with models. Oh and isn't giving you receipts either. And yet you continue to stake him.

Priceless.

Let me help you try to understand. By doing those things you are going to force the truth of his theft to come to light right? You think that once he's exposed as a thief there is no way recourse for you to get your money? Is that your argument here? If so that's laughable. If you tell him you are going to go to the police and file a police report saying he stole your money than he might cough up the money that he stole from you. Presumably he still had the money after he stole it from you right???

20k is not a small fraction of 150k, its a fraction.

Impressive! We've solved how to recoup all debts in the poker world guys! Threaten guys with police reports and/or use physical violence! Can't believe one has ever thought of that and everyone doesn't have their money back. It's been right under our nose all this time.

But more seriously, I already admitted to being possible somewhat degen/naive/overly optimistic about his poker relationships to continue the stake (we profited over $30K in swaps), but I didn't lose any money from the continued deal--I got money BACK.

So if you are calling me an easy mark for continuing the relationship despite getting back some money after the backpack story, then fine, I'll cop to that. But it's just unreasonable to say I was gullible for staking a guy and not expecting him to steal.

I really don't know what you are talking about in your last post so I'll just say hope you learned a lesson. But to me, you are a case study in how Not To Stake. You didn't get receipts, very little verification it seems on your end, the whole ridiculous backpack story and you let it go without any kind of report from law enforcement to corroborate Zo's story, letting this guy buy in 15 times for a donkament tournament at 500 a pop. I assume no receipts on that either. He coulda pocketed most of that money and claimed it was all used for rebuys.

For someone that seems to have a good understanding of poker and can be vouched for, you were a little more than just naive in my opinion. Easy mark would be a kind way to describe you.

East Coast Balla, you are an idiot.

Its easy to see the writing on the wall after all the facts come out.

Flirting with models on twitter is not enough of a strange occurrence to all of a sudden think you are getting scammed. Zo is a strange dude, he tweets and retweets about cupcakes, other desserts, food etc.

Should there maybe have been a police report? Sure, thats probably the correct thing to do in this situation.

I don't think these 2 things happening all of a sudden would make you think something shady is going on when nothing shady had happened up to that point.

Backing in the poker world is so common. For every scammer story there are a lot of successful ones that aren't talked about. Poker is so unique in that such large sums of money are exchanged/borrowed/loaned/staked etc.

I definitely think fake logic learned a lesson here, rightfully so. I am involved in some backing/gambling etc. Trust is always number 1 for me. Im gonna pass on buying a piece/staking someone if the talent is there but I am worried about the honesty of the player. I have passed on some winners because of this.

No one is immune to being scammed. Anyone can be taken, all you can do is do your research and be aware/stay on top of situations. The dude with the cleanest rep of all time can have something happen to them and go from super honest to super shady.

East Coast you don't sound like you are involved in high stakes poker. Stop being a dick, you don't know/understand the world

[x] you are commenting on a single post without looking at the previous posts

I don't think there is any 'allegedly' about Karim's cheating and deceiving is there? He admitted to it regarding several backers in the Glantz twitter feed, so I think we can leave out 'allegedly' for fakelogic's losses too.

His scamming actually goes back further than all of this (2012). He was banned from Chipmeup, a staking site for constantly creating packages, the funds received would then be used to play previous packages in hopes to bink something and get square... needless to say he ran bad for awhile and made up some garbage and lied about playing things he didn't. In the end he did repay most of what was owed (except for tourneys he said he played but really didn't) but that was pretty much the end of his online career. (pokerproplaya08 was his username on chipmeup). I used to buy a large piece of his action until he started being very slow to pay out (something that takes 3 minutes literally unless you don't have enough $ online) or would randomly not play with no word for days. Anyway, there is some more gas for the fire.

What does being in high stakes poker have to do with understanding anything?

i'm assuming its because people don't make a habit of carrying around the suitcases of cash which are needed to play for a living at this level. So regularly loaning, or owing large sums of money, etc is just part of the job description.

and people owing what seems like huge amounts of money afterwards, is just standard. we only hear about these things, when they go badly. I'm sure tons of money was still being successfully moved around with this Zo guy, which often makes the situation extremely murky...which goes back to your question.

for example; you may have suspicions about someone and legit worried about a debt of 10k...but then you see him handing over much larger sums of money to big name, reputable pros, or vice versa. again we only hear about these things when it goes south. hindsight is 20/20

I disagree with this premise. Just like any other profession, you're going to have people that are both good and bad at their jobs. I think a good professional can easily avoid this nonsense. Sure, you might do it with a very small group of people for very specific circumstances (like you travel to Aussie Millions and need to buy-in with the local currency) but other than that, a professional should own and manage their bankroll.

I play quite a bit and my rules are (1) never play with less than 50% of myself and (2) never stake someone that has less than 50% of themselves. Pretty simple rules to keep you out of trouble and try to avoid staking deadbeats - if you cant have 50% of yourself then that tourney is just too big for you, period.

wrong.

Hi Antonio