Not to throw a monkey wrench in the situation, but if he truly was mentally unfit to make a deal or contract, he may have some wiggle room. That being said, it sounds like he was selling the funds at a discount and the final shipment numbers should stand. Each person takes care of taxes on their side out of whatever numbers they have after the shipment.
In reality, If the one guy received cash for full tilt online funds, I don't see a traceable, taxable transaction there.
As for the guy who received the online dollars, I don't see any real tax consequences there until he cashes the money out. Technically the transaction for him could be considered a capital gain as if he had bought a bond at a discount and it doubled in price. But it would only be taxable when he sold it. Again, this is a murky situation because it is online poker funds.
My solution is that the shipper send the full amount as promised in the original deal. Neither person pay any taxes.
In the future, get all money in hand before shipping any online funds. I don't care if it's your mother and she needs $350 to play a super satellite. You get the money in hand before shipping the funds.

This is just so stupid. I suppose the bank should collect all the mortgage payments from you before giving you the money to buy your house.

Yep he scammed you good, his rep deserves to be tarnished.

He would have a lot of wiggle room if the contract was ridiculously bad for him as then you could argue no sane person would agree to it and clearly mental state was the reason he did.
Here however the contract was perfectly normal. 8.5k now for maybe 16k if FTP comes back was perfectly reasonable deal back then. Many people agreed for similar rates.

I also think he should have recourse if he is busto. There is difference between saying: "I am busto, I owe xxxxxx$ to other people and can't pay, let's figure something out" and "I got hit with possible tax bill and I think you should be the one to pay it" which is what OP is basically saying.

It wasn't possible in this situation.

Zachary Parker had maybe-money on FTP and needed real money now, OP had real money now and was willing to gamble on FTP coming back. The contract satisfying needs of both parties ensued on perfectly normal market rate. The only problem is one side refuses to pay.

OP....Let me see....you send someone you've never met and don't know, a large sum of money on the chance you might get paid back someday. He sends you 3/4 of the agreed amount and stiffs you on the last 1/4. I think you should thank your lucky stars you ever saw a dime from this deal. You got paid more than you gave him. Granted it was less than what you agreed upon, but dude, at least you got your money back and a bit more. Personally, I think making the deal you did originally qualifies you as a "sucker" who deserves to be parted from his money. Chalk up the supposed $4000 shortage to the price of the lesson of not being such a fool next time, and don't make deals with people you don't know.

GET OVER IT !!

OP was happy to exploit a situation when he saw an opportunity to almost double his money out of someone innocently caught up in the FTP scandal. Why? Greed.

OP was either naïve or happy to take a very high risk of never getting paid. I personally think naïve. Fact is he made a 41% profit on his money (annualised return of over 18%) when many poker players / people generally would have made more excuses than Parker and never paid anything back.

OP had the opportunity to get on record an arrangement over taxes right at the start but failed to do so.

Parker kept in regular contact and was candid and open and paid out the 12K as soon as he was able. Some of his comments perhaps require an apology, but then again OP gave impression he was OK with 12K with all his 'OK' and 'OK thanks' replies and then as soon as he gets it goes back to pressing for the rest.

OP has not got a prayer of getting a cent more of he goes to court and will burn the 12K in any legal action he takes.


I can understand OP being sore he didn't get the full 16K or even 14K, but in the circumstances he should be grateful he made a profit out of a high risk situation.

This is an incorrect analogy. It would be better to compare this to selling something on ebay or craigslist. Let's say I have a chainsaw for sale. I post it on Craigslist and get a potential buyer. The buyer says " sent me the chainsaw by UPS and I will send you a check in the mail." I laugh out loud and say "No, you send me the money first, and then I will ship you the chainsaw." The buyer says "well, you could keep the money and not send the chainsaw." I say "You could keep the chainsaw and not send a check if I sent it to you first."
He agrees, and we agree to meet at a convenient location and I bring the chainsaw and he brings the cash. That is how transactions with anyone involved in poker should work. The risk of scam is way, way too high to trust any poker player.
I realize it wasn't possible in this case, because full tilt money could not be shipped. I am just saying in the future, all such transactions should be done in a secure manner. Cash in hand before any money is shipped online.

After reading the FB posts, I can't see anyone siding with Zachary Parker.

Being broke doesn't excuse breaking a deal. Hope a measly 4k is worth ruining your rep and being exposed as a theif every time someone googles your name.

lol at him calling you petty, you offered to pay taxes on your portion, even when you didnt have to, seems like a reasonable solution and compromise.

Some believe he only has to claim the $8500, if any, some believe he has to claim the whole thing.

your offer to pay tax on your $7500 is pretty fair result for this guy (considering he claims he isnt someone who is a scammer)

clearly if he doesnt accept to pay his own taxes on the money he actauly got ($8500) then its a scam

i dont know whats so hard for you to understand. you get 8,500, that is your income from this--you set aside 2500 or whatever for taxes and report 8,500 as income. you dont get to spend the 16k, that isnt yours, you dont owe taxes on it all.

i also dont get wtf ur talking about with a staking agreement selling winnings. $ that is yours you pay taxes on ,both parties. if theres some selling agreement then it adjusts for what each person actually keeps. you do have a contract, you have records of a convo and then you received 8,500... this demonstrates what is going on. then you have a record of sending him $, though not all of it.

if you got audited you could prove you entered this agreement/contract, showing him sending you 8,500 and then showing you sent him the 16k.


so what are you planning on reporting as income? 16k? 8.5k? or 12.5k? because as it stands now you owe on 12.5k.


you are 100% scamming him as it stands now.

100 % this

Who gives a flying **** if he was depressed when he made the deal. What relevance does that have to the matter at hand? Absolutely none. He could be happy, sad, in the middle of a 3-way with Russian models or being rammed by a tranny from Trinidad and Tobago it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

If he is seriously attempting to say that he lacked the mental capacity to enter into a binding agreement because of his depression thats a horrible argument.

lol at people saying OP is a sucker who should have expected to get scammed. I think your in the wrong thread. OP is alerting the community of a scumbag scammer so it doesnt happen to anyone else, how is this possibly a bad thing?

isnt that what the community is for, to protect each other, warn about sites not cashing out etc

Not just ancestors, descendants, who will be able to read all about this in the archives in future decades.

As for the tax thing - he needs to take professional advice in his jurisdiction on whether he owes taxes on the 8500 or the 16000 instead of being influenced by the guesses made by me and others in this thread. Secondly, the deal was just money for money - all business deals are pre-income tax unless otherwise agreed.

^You two are not very numerically literate, are you?

He took a calculated risk that FTP funds would become available at a price that he considered favourable, i.e. $8,500 v $16,000 where effectively he was being scammed (assuming claim is true) and only being given $8,500 v $12,000.

It is completely irrelevant that he actually got a return of at least his investment back as far as whether he has been scammed or not.

If a casino shows red as returning 1:1 on Roulette, and then they only give you $150 back on your $100 winning wager, by your logic you should be content. Can you really not see the flaw in your logic!!??

+1. This thread is basically a PSA against dealing with the accused in the future.

Did u guys read the first sentence of the OP? Or did you stop at "hello" ?

Full Disclosure: Zach is one of my best friends, and I have known him since he was a kid. Also, I am not big in the 2+2 community by any stretch, so I know what I say won't carry much weight.

The one thing we should all know for sure from reading just the OP is that Zach is not a scammer. What kind of scammer sends someone more money than they received? English isn't your first language, Tomas, but you are using an insanely liberal definition of scam if you think this situation even remotely approaches scam level.

While I'd admit Zach got a little aggressive in his discussion with you, he certainly wasn't asking for anything unreasonable.

So given that nothing in your transcript even approaches the level of scamming, I advised Zach that your libel and character assassination completely forfeits any additional money you are entitled to. Threads like this seriously damage reputations, and posting it before the tax issues have even been resolved or a new conversation had been initiated is just really bad form.

Scammers don't take 8.5k and give 12k. That's not how scams work. I'm not a big fan of threads like these for legitimate scams. When it's a situation that is *clearly* not a scam, I'd say the thread should be taken down, and your posting privileges suspended.

Just my biased 2 cents. Anyone who thinks this is a scam just chooses not to think. Period.

He didn't ask anything, He TOLD OP that he is not going to give him the money that he owes him. While its not a scam in the usual sense he owes someone money and has said he is not giving it to him, which amounts to the same thing.

In what world is Zach living in where he thinks that taxes should automatically be included in this sort of deal? I have never heard of taxes being involved in this sort of deal and if that is what he wanted he should have made it very clear when the deal was made.

It doesn't really matter why he thought it. The point is he clearly legitimately thought it. A scam is when you intentionally mislead someone. In this instance Zach not only paid the vast majority of the money, he segregated the remainder in good faith until he discovered the resolution to a financial issue that could cripple him (or even land him in jail).

This is a situation where both parties were fast and loose with a high dollar value deal. There was a miscommunication which in turn was handled less than ideally from each side.

There's no remotely reasonable definition of scam under which this situation falls.

Dude, you're super biased. If the facts in OP are true your friend Zachary Parker is a scammer and an idiot. It doesn't matter if Zachary Parker thinks what he did it right. You can scam and cheat people while believing you are doing the 'fair' thing.

You helped your friend a lot

Seem pretty simple. Absent a clear agreement at the time Zach accepted payment for the FTP funds on the handling of taxes, means there was no stipulation on the handling of taxes, and Zach owes the full amount.

Anything less is a scam.

Just quoting this. Good work 'friend'.

Lol come on, He segregated it in good faith? He just decided not to pay what he owed. I understand that he has to pay his taxes(he should have thought about that before hand, its not really OP problem) but any reasonable person would have tried to talk it through and come up with some sort of deal. OP even offered to pay half and lend him the other half to be paid back when he gets back on his feet. But he said no, he is not going to pay it back and that is not negotiable.