Hello,
I'm a regular poker player and I'm actually playing NL Hold'em cash games from 2/4 to 5/10. I was playing at ipoker as “maseratilover”.
I recenty suffered a robbery at NetBet Poker and I’d like to share it here with you, in order to warn other players who are playing at ipoker and basically to share what happened to me with this skin.
As extra info, I used to play about 20k hands per month during the last year from 200nl to 1,000nl, mainly 400-600nl.
On Monday January 19th I did with other grinders a round trip here in Thailand and I came back on friday 23th. When I opened the lobby on the next day I checked out that I have been robbed my NetBet account (I could not enter in my account and PTR showed activity con my account those days). I mailed them quickly, tried to concact them through phone a ton of times and I also sent them a fax. I phoned and mailed them repeteatedly and the first response I had from the was on the 27th by mail.
The chronology of the robbery is the following:
I received an email on the 16th of an attempt of access to my NetBet account and also another one from full tilt on the same day. The only different thing I could do is making a deposit at NetBet ipoker on the 15th on January, and about 40 minutes later a received on my mail a “nickname recovery” from full tilt. Seeing this I changed all my system and account passwords (I use keepass, all the tokens available when possible and some small extra things). In the account was about 4,000€.
-They got into my account on the 19th. They play some hands of every level from 2nl (0,01/0,02) to 400nl, including other intermediate levels like 50nl,100nl (I never played those stakes in that skin during the last year). The guy who was playing was so bad, he didn’t know too much about playing poker and he ended up playing HU 1k nl against good regs, limping trash and doing fool things. The connection comes from India. I sent also to NetBet my passport with entries/exits from the country to help to prove that this is definitively not me (I think is not necessary to share my passport here).
-I received a call to my cell phone from India, wich I didn’t answer (basically I was on vacation for some days). When I came back I checked my mail and saw that I was sent 2 fake mails not very well made, one under Neteller name, where they basically asked me for my secure ID and the other one pretending to be NetBet poker where they asked me again my neteller secure ID, saying that there was a mistake and to solve it they needed the secure ID. Both mails where kind of:
securityneteller5@gmail.com or
supportnetbetpok@gmail.com . This is not the first mail of this kind that I receive, but the last one was more than 2 months ago and was no attempt of connecting to any of my accounts but the mails where to my name. I tracked the phone number that called me and was an Indian phone number, +91 98881015xx located in Chandigarh, India. I suppose that their plan was to pretend to be NetBet and ask me some important questions like my neteller secure ID.
-They tried to get into Neteller, who blocked immediately my account and didn’t open it again until I call them through a phone line when I got back. They tell me that the connection attempts come from India.
-The robbers kept playing in my account (they didn’t loose too much the first day) and they tried to deposit with a credit card issued in Italy apparently under my name (Pedro Javier, just my given name). Italy is a country that is not where I live or been living at any time, I also haven’t been born there (Spain), is not my official residence country (UK) and also is not the country where I spent a lot of time in the last 18 months (Thailand). When NetBet sees that there is a connection from India (a country where I also never have been and I have no link with that country), they allow it, but when there is a 50€ deposit attempt (to an account that already has 4,000€), a clear try to deposit in order to withdraw there, from INDIA with an italian card to an account never linked to India or Italy they DON’T block my account. They try to contact me by phone, they can’t reach me and they have the absolutely stupid idea (or security plan) to not block my account and let that player who did absolutely anomalous moves on my account keep playing.
-As I have seen they kept playing during that day long and during the following one and they basically busted all they money that I had (they enjoyed a lot at 1kNL HU), leaving there 0,08€.
After trying during 10 days to contact them after a hell lot of calls to the phone number that there’s on the website and on the software, I got a response. They told me that they will take a look but they basically took a look somewhere else: they said that that's basically my problem (to keep my username and password safe, that it's in the soft terms and conditions). They also told me from wich IP did they connect to my account and the connection was made exactly from the same zone I received the phone call.
They asked ipoker an investigation to check everything like deposits / withdrawals or any chip-dumping case, but they basically said that they are not responsible about that, that is my problem to keep my passw safe and they are not going to reimburse me. I have to say again that from the first day I treid to contact them till someone answered there, 11 days passed. Then they took 8 extra days to kind of decide that that was not their matter and they were not responsible.
Also:
-There were no failed attempts on my account, they knew exactly my password.
-They tried it also at Full Tillt, 4 times in 20 seconds (I requested to Full Tilt a report about that), with no success on it. This happened after the NetBet account access. Full Tilt has a “nick recovery” request, wich I got into my email on that day, but they didn’t know the password. I suppose that they only had the NetBet password and they tried it also at Full Tilt (I suppose because it’s the only one with an automatic nick recovery but I’m not sure).
-I requested reports to all the other poker accounts that I have and there was no movement at any. The first and only access they had was to my NetBet account. They also might know my username PSR12345678, wich doesn’t usually appear anywhere.
They basically allow to play someone with an Indian IP, play in a way that is demonstrable that is not me, stop a 50€ deposit from somewhere strange but they don’t block my account. They try to contact me but in the same way they don’t block my account AND that I’m responsible about that. I basically wanted to warn you and expose here my case and experience on poker online with NetBet poker.
In my opinion, highlighting my limited computer knowledge and intuition about it, the robbery has some kind of direct link to their system, for a system failure, a data miss or was directly someone from the site (robbery or human mistake). It also could be something about the payment process at ipoker, “CosmoGaming”.
I'll be very grateful if someone can please shed some light about what could happen, how could they take my password and if something else is in danger (I did a full format and password and mail change of everything possible).
