I am brand new to this forum. I was told that if I come here someone would help me with my Pokerstars account. Pokerstars has froze my account because I bought $1500 off another member a month or two ago. They asked me to send them a copy of my drivers licence (which i did of course). The letter said
As part of a routine security check it has come to our attention that youare associated to 'swilmajadin'. We would appreciate it if you could explainyour relation to this player as we have an outstanding matter with them. Since we have to make sure that you are not the same person as'swilmajadin', we would like to ask you that you please provide us with aclear photocopy of your driver's license or other government issued photo ID(front and back).

Then they replied saying that It was not legible (which it was). The letter said
Regrettably, we were not able to verify these documents as the images thatyou provided to us are unclear once enlarged. We ask that you please resenda clearer copy of your documents as soon as possible.

So I rescanned it again normal and enlarged and sent it back. Then they replied saying
"Thank you for providing us with the information we have requested.Regrettably, we will not be able to fully reinstate your account until theissues in account 'swilmajadin' are resolved due to your association withthis player."

I'm not sure what to do now I have over $700 in my account. I tried to reach the player i bought the money from and of course his phone doesn't work anymore, he quit his job, and his old roommate says that he moved out of towm to live with his dad.

So how do I get my money out and/or how do I get my account up and running again. Is there a way to contact these people other than email cause I don't really get to express how I feel very well in writing.
PLEASE HELP!
Shendarella

Usually, your account will only get locked if they have good reason to believe you guys are related. It could be related by blood (family), by location (ip address), or by trading regularly with that player.

Was he from Texas?

When you google his player name, some poker player has a POF account that's the first hit.

If you bought money off this guy, did you REALLY believe the money was legit?

Did you pay full price, or .50 cents on the dollar?

OF COURSE, the dude owes them money. And that money would be directly related to the money in your account (which is obviously lesser than 1500 bucks).

Unfortunately, this is the same as most online money exchange operations, including Paypal. At least you are not out the original $1500.

Sorry, but I personally believe you are SOL.

If they do believe the two of you are related. "His" debt is your debt. Your account would only get locked temporarily if you could cover that debt w/ your account balance or permanently until you deposit enough to cover it.

swilmajadin - PokerStars



OPR and Sharkscope show him to be a losing tournament player as well.

Shenda...more than likely the $1500 he sent you was not legitimate funds (stolen or cancelled CC deposit).
In Stars eyes the $700 you have remaining is not yours and will never be yours until Swilmajadin (or you) covers his debt. This might be more than $1500.
You will never be able to disassociate your account from his because of the $1500 transfer.

Look at Swilmajadin's game play of underfunded $5/10 NLHE, his big day on Feb 14, his bigger loss the next day, repeated Feb 23 and 24 and subsequent emptying of his account.

Did you get your money shortly after this?

He may have covered some of his losses by ripping you off.
That sucks, if so, and you have little recourse.

The way things appear playing Stars again will not be an option for you.



Rainbow...

p.s. Is this his ?:
http://www.plentyoffish.com/member15316332.htm

Yes that is him!! And after I posted on here I sent them a letter asking some one from pokerstars to call me so we could work this out. They DID!!! We worked through every thing and the turned my account back on! Thank you so much PS!!!!

Could you satisfy my curiosity by saying how it was resolved? how much money did you lose?

I am interested in this too. Can you say, please, what they asked, and did you lose money, you got from him.

Why does ptr say he has 8,000+ hands played yet from this SS I count maybe 1k?

Also, please tell us exactly what was said and how you worked this out OP. I'm glad to see PS back down from this a little. I've never been a fan of the way they hold others responsible for debts that are not theirs. I'd like to think that any funds that are able to be transferred are legit funds.

I mean really, just set a time limit or something. Don't allow funds that were deposited via echecks to be transferred until they clear and have some sort of time limit for credit card funds.

+1 on waiting for the funds to clear before allowing it to be transfered. Could save a lot of trouble.

That is already the case.

Ok, that's good news. So where does fraudulent money come from then, charge backs or stolen credit cards/ credit card fraud?

I noticed you took that out of the quote. Wouldn't it help to put some restrictions on the transferring of credit card deposits? It would seem strange to me if someone deposited via CC then transferred that money within a shortish period of time.

I understand the challenge, as cc charge backs can be done weeks after the fact but this would help curb the other fraudulent activities that could be performed via a cc deposit.

I only showed the sessions since Feb 12th.

Results by game type: http://www.pokertableratings.com/sta...ch/swilmajadin

are you guys the same person?

Here's one way. Player A one generates fraudulent funds and dumps the money to Player B. Player B then trades it in the forums.

Pokerstars will have a difficult time determining which winning players are legit and which ones are in the fraudulent circle.

In actuality, it's probably a little more complicated than that but you get the idea.

The beauty of money laundering.

So a lot of this is actually based on the fact that some sites allow echeck funds to be immediately available for play/use. I completely understand why that is a good thing for pretty much everyone but it is not necessarily the "norm" as many other sites have added time restrictions.

I guess it comes down to figuring out if the plus side is worth the downside and possibly trying to find some happy median. How about a stipulation that would require you to make a certain number of successful deposits before you can have the future deposits fronted to you?

I mean, the sites have made a decision witch is good for them, all players, and the depositor. I just don't care for the policy of holding other peoples accounts hostage over a debit that is not theirs. I'm unfamiliar with how PS does it and I think they only do it when there is substantial information leading them to believe that the person who made the bad deposit and the person who now has his account frozen for being in relation to him, are the same people. Please correct me if I don't have that right.

OTOH ftp seems to do this with anyone who has had any relation to the person who deposited bad funds, like even a transfer history only. I would think IP's come into play, personal info, and whatever else.

I only know what I have seen and I've only seen posts/threads about it here so I could have bad information and everyone who complains of this scenario knows exactly what they have done and exactly what they need to do to fix it. If this is not the case then the sites either need to adopt more strict policies regarding making deposits that have not been processed available or they need to stop strong arming others and chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

I've played on about six different sites. I don't recall ever having a waiting period for deposits to clear before being able to put the money into play. Maybe echeck deposits are treated differently than cc or ewallet money. It's been a while isince I deposited so I could be wrong.


I'm not sure what Pokerstars is doing incorrectly. It seems there is much more fraudulent money on pokerstars than on FTP. Another possibility is that FTP just eats more of these losses as a cost of doing business.

Thanks for your posts, nimbus. They've been helpful to me in understanding some of this.

I was referencing echeck deposits, witch are probably a huge factor for Americans, rather then Europeans as they have many easy ways to deposit. I think I read today that it was Carbon that makes you wait(7 days?). I can't name another off hand but I'm sure there was another US serving site with a similar policy.

It just seems that echeks are the biggest contributor to fraudulent funds and to shorten my post and get to my point (sorry, I can ramble): I think if sites are not going to add more strict provisions themselves, then they need to be held accountable for the money they have released, not others.

Josem is welcome to come back and enlighten me as I may have this all wrong. Perhaps, as I said above, the only accounts that are locked because of this are accounts that they are 90%+ sure are the same people. That to me would be acceptable.

As far as why PS seems to have more problems with fraudulent funds there is the obvious one that they are 2-3 times bigger then FTP, but also some less known factors are ftp has a pretty small starting limit allowed for echeck. It goes up after further successful deposits. You also have to have a 3 month deposit history/playing history in order to be able to transfer at all. I don't know how ps works, but I don't think they have this same policy regarding transfers.

Another question, if you don't mind.

Can anyone confirm if stars will step in on a trade if the trade was done via chat on their client? I read an email a person who was scammed received from stars and it said because the trade was done outside of the client (it was on 2+2) that they could do nothing because of the various confirmations they would have to make, or w/e

Anyway it seemed to imply that if you were to get someone to spell out and agree to a trade within the client that they could/would do something about it if it went bad.

I do want to say that stars has been very good about responding to, an doing whatever they are allowed to do, to a player who was scammed via a trade. They also recently implemented transfer limits and these can be raised based on history/amount/etc. I think the transfer limits, while it was a pita for most when they first applied them, have proven to be a very good and effective tool for lowering the amount of fraudulent funds players receive. Now I'm only hoping they can further that and either add restrictions to availability of echeck deposits, or not hold others accountable.

I vote for restrictions on transfers until Echeck clears (their 10 day waiting thing), just like for withdrawals.

However, this doesn't stop fraudulent CC problems (which can be exacerbated by overseas folks whom can still use CCs).

Pretty sure this is already in place on pokerstars.

I don't know the answer to this.

I do know a number of cases where the trades were explicitly spelled out in this forum (and other forums). Both traders specifically mentioned the site names, user ids, and the amounts. The trade went bad. Security at pokerstars spoke to security at FTP and verified the trade did or did not take place. Money was recovered from the scammer's account and returned to the victim.

Not to say that this will happen all the time. You'll often get the "trade at your risk" response. I guess it depends on who you get at support and if they are in the mood to go the extra mile in helping you out.