tl;dr:
-receive a few k in transfers from a particular player from fund swaps
-a couple months later I get an email from Pokerstars saying my account is locked due to the association I have with that person's account.
-submit multiple pieces of evidence supporting my uninvolvement from any wrong doing, yet account remains locked due to the fact that whatever issues exist with the original account have not be resolved yet.

Stars SN: Lake Dredger

Hi all, on March 12 I received this email from stars:
I responded with a couple emails explaining the nature of the transfers and asking about more details related to the original issues. I was met with these responses:

After this there were a handful of more emails exchanged, with the gist of all of them being myself asking for my account to be unfrozen, and with stars giving the same generic stonewalling response.

Something that I thought would be a resolution came a few days ago when I received this email from stars:

I was actually able to contact the person who was behind the issue account, and got this picture from him:


I sent another response to stars offering to repay the measely 20 pound chargeback this player supposedly did (ldo). I also asked them if it was ok if I still used full tilt account. This was the reply.

So over 2 months after my stars account is frozen, and only after I ask them, they decide I am such a security threat that my full tilt account needs to be frozen as well! (it was only just locked this morning). And I am still left in the dark as to the real reason why my account was locked.

Ultimately, I made this thread since talking to the security person was like talking to a brick wall. It seems as if the fact I am innocent is irrelevant, and my account is only banned due to some sort of administrative policy.

Just to clarify a few points.

You said you received a few k from this player. Over what time span did these transfers occur? Was it a staking deal... did he owe you money in real life?

Do you know this person in real life?
What games did he play and what games do you play?
Ever played at the same tables?
Has your money being confiscated as well as being banned? How much money if both?


Based on the emails that Stars sent you it seems this guy did a number of chargebacks and with that money he sent it to you.

Were your FTP and Stars accounts linked together so you could do transfers between them?

Sounds like the funds you received from this player had been obtained fraudulently by the player

How do you know him? How did you come about to do the transfers with him? Has he ever used your computer or shared an IP address with you (played from your house, etc)?

fwiw, its standard to lock accounts like this by sites

These funds were sent to me as swaps from funds on another site. We do not know each other in real life, we were only online acquaintances.
Afaik he was just some degen guy who would play anything from 10nl-1knl depending on what was in his account. I was a reg at 100nl at the time.
I believe i played something like 20 hands at 100nl with him once for the sake of killing time.
Apart from some FPPs, I had nothing on stars at the time.

Here is the email I sent to stars right after my account was frozen. It does a lot as far as explaining the situation.

Is Stars using Nigerian scammers for their customer support now?

Yes, my ftp and stars were linked. Him and I shared nothing of the sort and we were only online acquaintances.

It's plausible that the funds he sent me were obtained illegitimately, but I dont think it's the responsibility of the recipient to vet that. If he had sent money to sauce or forhaley, would they have been banned as well? It is also worth noting that I've done something like ~10k worth of transfers with multiple different people. It's not like he was the only person I have ever received a large amount from.

Thread title doesn't describe what happened here. I thought you'd received funds by accident!

Post #4 was more helpful.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but cliffs would be more like:
* OP transferred money to a degen on another network.
* Degen transferred money to OP on Stars.
* Degen broke some of Stars' rules (not known or detailed, but included making a chargeback that led to Stars being out of pocket), so he was banned.
* Stars support locked OP's account, apparently because he has a "close association" with the degen.
* OP claims he barely knows the degen, was scammed by him, and no longer talks to him.

It appears that Stars has an official policy of closing the accounts of people that associate with (or receive transfers from) scammers. Whether that's a good policy to use in all similar cases is debatable, but Stars is in a very tricky position.
In the UK, handling stolen money is a criminal offence. Losing your right to play on Pokerstars because you did some transfers with a degen/scammer is slightly less of a punishment than having the police kick your door down and making you repay the victims.

It seems the lesson to be learned is: Don't do financial deals worth several thousands of dollars with people you neither know or trust. 'Guilt by association' is a real phenomenon, and in the real world it can have much worse consequences.

There has been an update. After I made this thread I got an email saying the case was being transferred. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be true and I received the same generic, illogical, cookie cutter reply today.

Firstly, thanks to the mod that evidently fixed the thread title.
I can understand your frustration, as it seems you're innocent of obvious wrongdoing. You've been helpful in providing info, whereas most threads that contain the words "account frozen" are started by people that are not being wholly honest.
But the replies from Stars seem pretty logical to me. They quoted the ToS which you signed up for. Many of the terms are there to protect the site (and its customers) from cheats and money-laundering criminals.
The ToS for player transfers states: Users are reminded that it is their responsibility to ensure they know who the other Users are before entering into these arrangements.

Unfortunately, as you've said, "I met him on another pokersite... I no longer speak with that individual".

I sympathise with you for getting caught up in some business transactions with a guy that turned out to be dodgy, but Stars is only following its own ToS. Unless someone else can think of any great ideas...

I er, um...wait, what?

Of course you bear responsibility for this. In many jurisdictions, if you buy stolen property, knowingly or not, you lose it. And in the case that it was done knowingly, you could be criminally charged.

You say you were scammed and no longer were in contact with the guy. When did you contact him and have him send you the e-mail you then posted in this thread?

I'm surprised he was so helpful.

So you're saying, if on twoplustwo for example, someone on the highstakes transfer thread does a transfer with someone who it later turns out did something dodgy, the innocent person deserves to have their account banned as well? There are no real reasonable precautions someone can take to ensure that the other site has not done something shady.

In any case, it is not even confirmed one way or another that the issue is with this player was him using illegitimate funds to give me, Pokerstars refused to clarify it. It is just speculation as to what he initially did wrong. I was also told by the site that this was not a situation where I would be expected to remunerate stars in anyway.

Presumably most competent sites would have a scale in place which would depend on length of time on site, player points (rake) generated, stakes played, volume, etc vs association with fraudulent party. In a previous example/question of yours, its unlikely, imo, that sauce would be frozen for receiving $3.8K worth of funds, if this is indeed about the funds received. If he received a 6-7 fig amount then it might be different. Again, it depends also on what the actual fraudulent party did. It would be unlikely that this person only had a single fraudulent $20 deposit, and much more likely that there is a ton more involved.

A brand new player receiving a much smaller amount of funds, than you received, may find themselves in the same situation as yourself, etc

There is, you only trade with people you know/trust

If this was a high stakes reg would of never happen bet the ship.

No, that's not even remotely close to what I'm saying - that's a terrible analogy.

But in the situation you describe, it would depend on the situation. If it was felt that you in some way aided the scammer, then of course. If you did so unknowingly, probably not, but it's still possible. But that's all rather moot, since we're not a site that is accepting deposits from you or sending you money, and thus have no concern about being defrauded by you. The two situations are in no way, shape, or form analogous.

I'm going to assume you've worded this poorly, but if you meant exactly what you typed, then you should stop trading with people immediately.

There are lots of reasonable precautions you can take by doing research into your trading partners. Unfortunately, there of course is no 100% guarantee that even someone who appears to be extremely trustworthy won't turn rogue one day - that's the risk you take when you trade with strangers. Unfortunate, but true.

In the first point you addressed I was referencing the person being banned by the poker site, not 2p2 obviously

You offered to take care of the chargeback of 20 pounds and were still denied?

In that case, it sounds like you're just describing exactly what happened to you, but with the arrangements having been made on 2+2 rather than somewhere else. Do I have that correct?

Regardless, I don't think the banning of your account is a big deal. Stars can choose whose business they want, and if they have determined you're a risk to them for some reason, that's certainly their prerogative.

I was confused by that. OP's wording was confusing too.
FWIW, the date on the email about the chargeback is November 2014, so it seems possible/likely that OP did at least know that Bigboifanboy was in "trouble" several months ago. According to OP, his own Stars account wasn't frozen until March 12th 2015.

Cynics can no doubt imagine the piles of dirty cash that OP withdrew in the intervening period, but let's be charitable, credit him with some naivety, and give him the benefit of the doubt.

so Bigboifanboys account is -£20 and when its restored to £0 you will get ur account back? is that correct? I dont understand why they wouldnt let u just pay this £20 when u asked them if u cold or since you know the guys email address/skype whatever, arrange to send him £20 and then he pays it? I know the £20 isnt ur responsibilty but if it gets u ur account back then its worth it

Going on what OP stated in this thread this is not the correct

or maybe Bigboifanboy has charged back more than 1 deposit of just 20 STER and is trying to downplay the situation to the OP. Stars' emails are pretty clear that its more then just an issue over 20 STER

Yes you have that correct. And how is being locked out of 70% of the online poker player pool due to something that is not my fault "not a big deal"?

It's a big deal for you, of course, and I'm sorry for you that you dealt with the wrong stranger and got burned as a result. What I meant was that I don't think Stars has done anything wrong here, and thus it's not a big deal to the poker community at large.

About the only suggestion I have for you is to PM one of the Stars reps on our site, but I don't know that you'll get a different result - it's worth a try, though.

Update:

After a couple months from not hearing anything from Pokerstars, I received this email:

So essentially, despite the fact that I have not broken any ToS, and even Pokerstars has acknowledged I am not responsible for the offense committed by the person I received funds from (they denied my offer to indemnify them in order to receive my account back), I have been given the harshest punishment to exist in online poker. Under no strain of logic is this just.

why is a portion of the email clipped out of this post, seems like some pertinent info there

the part following this quote:
also how quickly were these funds cashed out following the transfers?