My name is Daniel Ashman. I used to post on 2+2 under alias thebruiser500, and was part of the poker community for over ten years. I was previously a HSNL regular and published a couple of poker books.

I have posted various times in the HSNL transfer thread under the name "tomatoe" wanting to trade Bitcoins for Neteller. The user 'asdf26' PMed me saying he wanted to trade $12,000 worth. He said he was Joshua Beckley and that he won 2nd place in the WSOP last year.

I googled 'asdf26' and could see on P5s that this was the name of Josh's Stars account. I also looked through the post history of the 2+2 account and found this post from last year where he was selling action to the Berlin $25k:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...markup-1566745

I also posted in the transfer thread asking "has anyone done a transfer with asdf26 before or can comment on his character or know him personally?" and user Jasbral (credible account, created over 5 years ago) replied 90 minutes later with, "I know him personally and have done business with him in the past. No issues working together".

Lastly, I ask him to confirm it is actually Joshua Beckley by posting on Twitter (on his account which has 5,000 followers), which he did. Here is a picture of the PM confirming that tweet:

http://i.imgur.com/6XTNsml.png

The tweet is deleted now, but you can see from the screen shot I posted that it linked to the Twitter account in question. It's not a masked link - it's real.

At this point I felt confident I had done a good amount of due diligence. I sent around $6,000 in Bitcoins. asdf26 replied on 2+2 and said that Mike McDonald (Timex) would be sending the funds in a few hours (not trying to drag Timex's name into this, I have no idea if he knows Josh, but it felt relevant to mention that). I didn't receive any funds. Once I realised that I had been scammed, I sought out Josh on Facebook.

I won't paste the full conversation, but if Josh wants to he is welcome to. It took a while, but eventually we confirmed that:

- The 2+2 account is his, and was hacked.

- The Twitter account is his, and was hacked.

- The hacker messaged Jasbral on Twitter and got him to do the vouch. Jasbral confirms that in this post and says he doesn't check the board often and the post wasn't him vouching 'for the transaction'.

- Josh says that the hacker 'seems like a hacker that attacked [Jasbral] before'. I'm unclear if he's saying it's potentially the same person, or a similar approach.

Josh is definitely angry with what has happened, but has made it clear that he doesn't think he owes me any money and that 'it was out of his control'. I think there is a responsibility to protect your accounts, especially when you are a pretty public figure in the poker community. I'm interested to know what the community thinks is right, and if there's any precedent here.

Thanks.

this sucks. just wanted to post and confirm that this is bruiser and that i have known him for many years.

No response from him

I want to be clear that I did not vouch for the person. I specifically did not use that word. A vouch has implications that I was not comfortable with. This is a really ****ty situation, but I do not use that 2p2 thread anymore for my own personal business.

I have done business with josh before, but the person was obviously not josh.

Also, caveat emptor..........

I'd have to agree that it seems irresponsible for anyone, and particularly those with a good reputation, to use a weak password for their user account in a forum where it is known that large amounts of money are moved about between users, for one reason or another. Even if users don't move money about themselves, their good names can be used easily to scam others if their accounts are hacked.

(The hack in this particular case may or may not have been made simple because of a weak password.)

There is 2 sides to this.

I for one think your due diligence was lacking as with a quick search it shows the asdf26 account hasn't made a post in over 10 months and never in the hsnl transfer thread. With bitcoin being the hackers option of choice due to the lack of reversals and anonymity it seems there is enough red flags to not make the trade. just never send bitcoin first to people you dont know or get hard vouches from respected people seems to be the best line.

I know all this as i got stung a few months ago in this exact scenario and was lucky enough to get 50% of the funds back from the person who got hacked but i wasn't expecting it in all honestly i felt anything was a bonus.

On the other side i agree with you that asdf26 should take some responsibility for not protecting his accounts and saying its totally out of his control is clearly false. He obviously has a big security leak if someone can hack his 2+2 AND twitter and should assume responsibility for a % of the amount i would say.

If you are saying "the hacker wanted to trade for bitcoin so that is a red flag" that isn't what happened here.

If you are saying "hackers look for bitcoin transfers to due lack of reversals" then yea, fair.

The combination of wanting bitcoin not posting on the forum at all in 10 months and never posting in the hsnl transfer thread is what i meant as red flags. One of these on their own doesn't mean much but all 3 together seems to be enough of a warning.

Agree with this.

If somebody hacked my accounts because i had the same password on multiple sites, a weak password, i fell for a phishing attempt or some other way i was hacked because of my own neglectful security i would feel some amount of responsibility for the other person losing money. The more due diligence the other person did the more responsibility that i would feel for them losing the money.

If i got hacked by some security exploit in teamviewer/forum boards/twitter or whatever i would feel very little responsibility.

Wild speculation on my part but it seems Joshua Beckley's 2p2 password is the same as his twitter password and if that is the case it's neglectful security on his part. The trade went ahead partial because of the verifying tweet.

Jasbral, how did it come about that you decided to log onto the NLHE high stakes forum and say user asdf26 is trustworthy? Joshua said you had his phone number, and he has yours, can you please explain your guys relation? Joshua also said the hacker tried to hack you before and you knew what state he is from and possibly more information. Maybe you can share that information with us?

Josh contacted me on Twitter. I assumed it was him and he asked me to post on the 2p2 thread. I was concerned for his safety because I'd been scammed off that thread before. The scammer asked me to post on the thread impersonating as josh. I didn't have Josh's number, he gave it to me after we figured out he was scammed.

Josh and I have done business before and have hung out outside of poker. Sorry again that you got scammed. I would contact BBB if you have any more questions about scammers. He's handled all of that for me

good to see one of the four players in this story has an IQ over 85

The same guy got me for $7.5k BTC yesterday, promising a wire in return.

My due diligence was to google the name and see that it was attached to Josh. I viewed the thread for last year's $25k Berlin as it at least being his 2+2 account because it'd not been contested that it was him. I saw that there were recent tweets on his twitter. I'm pretty sure the scammer created a skype account for Josh (from Florida, status was iflyfirst.com, picture of him) because I asked to talk on there.

This obviously is not good due diligence, and I admit that yesterday I was busy and wanted to save some hassle so I trusted him from there. I feel like a ****ing idiot and perhaps 85 is even being generous.

this guy sent me a pm... he said that he wanted to move 75k in stars that he was Joshua and he was a member of the november 9 last years i can post a picture of the pm if that has some use

JBL he def doesnt owe any part of this, sucks you got took but if he didnt have any part besides being hacked not sure you can actually expect him to pay some

jasbral, saying "caveat emptor" is a peculiar thing to say in this case. you are basically saying "when i explicitly sign onto 2+2 for the purpose of saying someone is credible, dont trust me." the fact that you already had a run in with someone trying to run a scam specifically with joshua, and now you got on 2+2 to say how trustworthy his 2+2 screen name is, is a real head scratcher.

furthermore, saying buyer beware here is a hit at josh. its another way of saying, josh's official 2+2 account which he used to sell action in a $25,000 euro buy in tournament is not to be trusted. and we are saying josh's official twitter account, which he uses regularly, for business, is not to be trusted.

like, if someone goes into bank of america, and there is a person walking around the floor with a bank of america uniform on, and they say "let me see your debit card sir, i will help you" and then they take it and disappear with your money, is bank of america responsible? would bank of america cover that loss? could you trust bank of america again if they said BUYER BEWARE, SEE YA!

Confused on what you're looking for right now. I apologized already. There are disclosures and liability forms we sign when we use the hsnl transfer thread. No one forced you into doing the deal. If my word is discredited in your eyes, then there's not much I can do right now. And ya I ****ed up and should have thought through it more like timex

I also never again vouched for the deal. I guess we have a different understanding of terminology, but I said that josh was a good character. When I don't vouch or say that specific word online, then I take no responsibility for a deal. We obviously weren't dealing with josh so we both got scammed. We also have no idea who scammed you right now, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about.

I hope you're not implying anything shady on mine or Josh's part in what you said above. This is going to be my last post on this thread. Gl

Do we know 100% his accounts were hacked?

I appreciate the quick warnings posted on 2p2 as I was very close to sending him money. With 2 accounts having been hacked I think the right thing to do would be for Josh to send some amount of money to the victims.

I would never expect to be reimbursed any amount by the person I thought I was trading funds with in this scenario.

I don't understand this part, did I miss something?

For me personally, if I had such poor security practices that someone could take control of my 2p2 and twitter, both accounts that I use to do business on, and use them to scam multiple people without me even being aware, then I would feel responsible. Both my own personal moral code and also just from an EV standpoint, I'd basically be saying "I can't be trusted to handle money unless you are actually face to face with me"

Alobar,

Pretty sure that means "impersonating josh, the scammer asked me..."

ok, that makes sense now. thanks

"protected his accounts" is a subjective standard.

Not relevant IMO.

Y'all need to find this scammer and whup his ass like back in the day.

I am confused. How did the hacker know exactly who to reach out to from the hacked twitter account to ask for a vouch?

Also, after being notified of the vulnerability of his accounts, how does this happen: