i guess HIVs past was so long ago a lot of people here didnt know about it. i knew and still bought a small amount. i even spent a few hrs with him this trip and he seemed in good spirits etc.

jon if u wanna PM/aim me about whats up so we can get this resolved or everyone hit me up.

hiv????

+1

+1

It's out of line to warn the community about his past? Are you f'ing nuts?

it's amazing some of these guys can be so good at poker and yet so ******ed in common sense.

they knew this guy was a degenerate chunk off artist and didn't speak up when he was soliciting 50k+, unreal.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1261

sighting?

Progress. HIV sent me email this morning. I won't directly quote the whole thing, but I'm not leaving anything substantial out, either.

He is going to stay away from gambling, and set up a payment plan. He asked for my address to send me checks.

He will write up a post detailing everything that happened and include pictures of receipts for the tournaments he did play, but that will be his last post on 2+2. He wants to advise others of his mindset so they don't make the same mistakes he did. He intends to avoid 2+2 and AIM completely. He says "I'm not a horrible person...I just did a horrible thing and its made me realize I have to make drastic changes in my life, so these are the first steps towards those changes."

---

When we have all the information I'll send out refunds with the money he sent me on Stars. (Rough calculation is every $685 share is worth $523 but will only get $130, until HIV pays more...)

Does anybody have suggestions for how to fairly handle it if it takes HIV a long time to pay this back. I mean, it looks like it might take a couple of years at least. I don't want to be making 15 small transfers every six months to poker accounts that might not even exist any more.

Agree, investing in a guy who has won tons of money playing a ton of tournaments who is now so broke he cant pay his travel expenses is a great ****ing idea.

followed by

Just to be clear, when i made my post earlier itt i was not intending to starte a debate between people who knew about him and people who didn't. Its our own fault clearly but i think moving forward the community as a whole has potentially learned a lesson (as well as the people who got scammed obv). This thread shouldn't be an argument between people who invested/didn't invest. We should be trying to figure what actually happened and what is going to happen in the future so that we can recover our losses. Whats done is done, lets try to get to the bottom of this. HIV should really be posting itt by now...

yeah come on man, it's not like things can get any worse so man up and say something.

As for the whole debate regarding what ought and ought not to have been known to investors, I'm an investor and I happened to be kind of aware of some slightly dubious background stuff, but I was lazy and don't consider myself hard done by. I do however think it's quite ****ty of people to be posting itt about how all investors ought to have known everything and seen that this was a "recipe for disaster", when to all intents and purposes hiv was a well-known, popular poster with a good online record.

Specifically, AA's suggestion that people ought to have been suspicious that despite hiv's record of huge mtt scores he wasn't in a position to pay his own expenses, is pretty absurd. Literally thousands of extremely solid, totally trustworthy players out there still seek backing for all sorts of IRL reasons. I'm not personally claiming ignorance here, but imo there are a good few investors who bought in legitimately believing there to be no good cause to be wary. I repeat that I feel bad for these people and I hope some sort of solution is found to minimise the chances of it happening again.

Although HIV is an idiot, I don't think anyone here will be scammed when it is all said and done. I dont know how he plans on getting the money, and although I've only met HIV IRL a couple times, I know a bunch of people that know him well, and they all say he's a stand up kid, and I'm pretty sure he will eventually make things right here.

Jonathan Drane intends to avoid 2+2. At least he's open about it.

I would have a problem with these statements if HIV owed me money.

Your last point is true, and I suppose I regret using it as an argument, although I personally will not invest in someone who doesn't have a reasonable % of themselves unless they are extremely reputable (which HIV is not). I still don't think it would have been right for me to discuss his past issues in this thread considering how long ago they happened, and because he has never scammed anyone.

A scam is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. That's exactly what happened here, and the scammer is planning on avoiding 2+2 after one more post- presumably so he can't be confronted by his marks.

Jonathan Drane couldn't be handling this siuation any worse right now, IMO.

I think he's avoiding 2+2 because it exacerbates a gaming problem. From the tone of his emails, I suspect he would be willing to be in contact with any of the investors. If you wish to contact him, PM me your email and I'll send it to him.

[Aside - while I'm pretty pissed too, I can't believe that you think HIV avoiding 2+2 is a bad thing. He's expressed a willingness to communicate and make things right - you really think he should hang around in the thread and let everybody bash him?]

do you honestly think this was an "attempt to defraud" you guys?

I agree with this. Like I said, I don't know what the solution is tbh.

To be fair, most of the concerning stories were well over three years old, the picture is photoshopped, and Jon wasn't trying to rob anyone here, there was just a higher RoR than he expressed.

No offense intended to him, but I doubt he stays away from poker for long. e.g. He basically retired four years ago with this classic post in Psychology.

Should be going to the police if possible at this point. The fact that he intends to greatly distance himself from poker and forums does not bode well for him paying back the debt. I suppose if he can make a good faith payment extreme quickly police being contacted might be delayed.

Pretty much though this guy needs to come up with promissory notes to sign and detailed payment plan ASAP. Otherwise prosecute him if possible.

Top those thinking he will pay back the debt. What incentive does he have? He's said he is leaving poker and won't be communicating with people anymore. He pretty much is showing signs that he is trying to escape the whole situation.

1. you're an idiot

2. there was a better chance hiv wins a tourney, then chances of hiv plays with the cash on stars and loses it.

3. easy to talk **** when its all said and done.

4. you're an idiot

5. you're an idiot

6. stop making gay posts and sucking *****.

He's not being bashed at all, IMO. TBH, I think the tone of this thread is one of understanding.

maybe because he realizes what gambling/poker has done to his life and his personality, causing him to do something he would never ever do in his right mind, which is why he has to distance himself from gambling/poker.

lol at going to the police, for a gambling debt....

hes not trying to escape the situation, he's trying to fix the situation. the best way to start is by stayign away from gambling, which has costed him lots of $.

Hey, writing this for closure for the people who were affected by this and also to try to forewarn others who may have degenerate tendencies, like myself. It can so easily get out of hand and you have to have incredible discipline to succeed in the gambling world. I clearly do not possess this, and if you do, I respect you.

-------------------------

I arrived in Vegas and was feeling great about the freeroll. However I had only sold 70% at markup so had to push hard to get a little more sold. I did this after cashing at Venetian but before my 1k cash, selling 10% each to Brad and Brett, leaving 10% for myself.

After doing this, I inexplicably took my account restrictions off (they had previously been set to a maximum of 1/2 dollar)

I played sporadically after this, but mainly was focusing on tourneys, but every night when I'd get home I'd play cash, and it just started getting worse and worse. Not my results at this point, but just my behavior, as I had told myself things like "ok, just gonna play 4/8, nothing higher" and "ok only gonna play with my own money" since a small amount actually was mine, because of my cashes

Also, I was too lazy to make a bank of america account until it was far too late, I made excuses like I was playing tourneys, but in reality it would have taken 10 minutes to do and I should have gotten the money off there as soon as possible instead of just leaving most of it in my account....basically tempting myself to do exactly what I ended up doing.

------------------------

On June 14th, after busting the 1k and registering for the 2.5k plo, I went home and began to play online. The day did not go as well as the previous had, and I ended up 3 tabling 75/150 omaha 8 for a while, as well as playing 30/60 stud 8 and 40/80 8 game. After hours of playing, I found myself down 21k. This meant I was 13k short of where I needed to be, as I had won 8k the previous day. My mindset during this strech was "oh im just running bad, ill get it back for sure...im a sick o8 player these guys are awful, just a bad run ill get it back tomorrow" etc etc. Who knows why I thought this as I've never even had an inkling of success in o8 or pretty much any cash games for that matter.

The next day I played the plo and busted quickly, went home and played online again, losing 3k playing mostly 8 game.

The next day I busted my tourney again and went home, playing online and ended up winning 1k but staying up the entire night so that I was dead tired the next day at the venetian. I also was incredibly sick during this time, as I get food poisoning from almost anything and this was a particularly bad case, as Augie can attest to.

The next day, I woke up early and started playing online again, and ended up losing 6k more playing 10/20 8 game and a tiny bit of 40/80.

The following day, Sunday, I did not play the Venetian as my schedule had dictated, but instead stayed home and played online tourneys, saying to myself I was playing for Andrew but in reality just spewing, playing the sunday 500 and 100 rebuy which I had never played for him or even discussed playing. I didn't even cash and I don't expect Andrew to cover these losses even though we had a deal where he had my stars tourney action. I ended up losing around 1k.

So my total losses was around 22k for this time period of 6 days. It was at this point I realized I probably wasn't going to be able to win it back, and I stalled for time while considering my options. I considered faking tourney reciepts, registering and then unregistering for most of the tourneys, or even just running off with the money I had left in my account. In the end though, I decided to just come completely clean and start working on repairing the damage I had done.

-----------------------

I'd like to apologize to the following people I lied to:

Augie, who was kindly giving me rides to tourneys, and besides that, is basically the nicest guy I've ever met. I also believe he was affected (still owed?) by the whole cornell fiji thing

Chris, for saying everything was alright and I was planning on playing the razz the next day when I was in reality never going to

Brad and Brett, who I talked to around the same time and claimed I had only lost money that was mine and hadn't touched the rest

Andrew, who I spoke to on the phone and said everything was going great when clearly it wasn't

Tom, my roomate, for saying I only lost my own money when we talked a few nights before I left

John and Mariealena, my roomates, for saying I had a family emergency and had to return home...while technically true, certainly wasn't completely honest...also they were most kind and helpful in everything and I feel like I betrayed them somehow

---------------------

So what's next for me? Getting a job and working on paying you people back, for one thing. Not gambling ever again, for another (this is gonna be hard and I know a lot of you think I can't do it, but I honestly believe I can). The toughest part for me will be not poker, but giving up the NCAA brackets, which is honestly the most fun thing in the world. I encourage anyone who wishes to contact me to do so via email, jdrane[at]gmail[dot]com and I will respond promptly, give you an update of my status and how I'm doing, and answer any questions you might have. I think I've covered everything so at this point its just a matter of figuring out all the specific numbers and uploading tourney reciepts, so I'll take care of all that soon. Please feel free to give me any advice that you might have, I greatly appreciate all of it.

*poast on hold

fair enough HIV. I hope you do well in the future and all of us can recover the money the sooner the better.