Unlucky mate. To the scammer get some professional help asap

Wow that is classic, I hope he pays you back, back in the day I was like that also and did this twice here but I did manage to pay everyone back.

**Scam warning**

Myself and another user were scammed via cold PM in this thread.

I gave my skype to several people and one I ended up trading with accepted my WPN for stars, with him sending first. As he was sending first I naively assumed that it was no big deal. He sent me stars from several accounts telling me that it was his horses sending the money. I then sent him all the received money on WPN (black chip).

8 days ago stars froze my account and asked me to explain several, but not all of the transfers. I told them everything and included transfers done via this skype contact that they hadn't included. They reversed $650 worth of trades due to a negative balance (credit card charge back) from the accounts that sent to me. I had, of course, sent the money on WPN.

This is where it gets interesting. I had compiled a list of the accounts that I received from (and assumed were horses of this guy) and noticed one posted here yesterday. It's actually The post above: 2p2: sebeks49. Stars: Sebsssx

As soon as I saw that post I immediately PM'd him and he got back to me straight away and added me on skype. We figured out what happened.

Seb posted asking for a trade of his stars for party. The scammer had fraudulent funds on party and sent to him first. Once seb had received the money the scammer told him that he had several horses he needed to send money to, and asked him to send to several stars accounts (one of them was mine).

He used this method to channel money from Party - Stars - WPN (then presumably to bitcoin). In this way he essentially laundered the money through us and we didn't realise what had happened.

Seb had his account locked on Party as the funds he received were fraudulent, however he thankfully managed to get them back and his account re-opened after 1.5 months of speaking with their support.

I didn't get off quite as easily, some of the accounts he sent from have likely been funded by stolen credit cards (stars confirmed via e-mail that there were charge backs on these accounts leaving them in negative balance and took the shortfall from my account because I received it). So he has not exclusively deposited to Party via fraudulent means.

What this guy has done is quite clever, because he didn't even use his own stars account. However I was personally quite foolish in accepting trades from multiple accounts from one skype contact.

I believe the 2p2 account that messaged me was 'milos' and the skype that then added to me was 'Le_James' (location: Singapore)

I would like to highlight to everyone that if someone ever tries to send you money from several accounts the chance that these funds are compromised are much more likely. I have had > 1,000 people send me money on stars and this is the first time I got scammed, but it is a real risk.

Further, do not do any transactions with anyone that has not posted in this thread with their screen names etc as per the rules in the OP. I was doing a large amount of trades and overlooked this, that is on me and was foolish. I also should have just send back and denied the trade when he used several accounts (although playthrough on stars made this option less appealing).

sebeks49 had nothing to do with this scam, he was used as a middle man like me. I'll message him about this post and he should confirm that what I've said (at least regarding his account) is all accurate.

*

Just to add to this my username on stars and BCP is 'ab160'. If anyone else has been affected by this please get in touch with me and I will do anything I can to help you get your money back.

Additionally, if anyone has any more info on this scammer 'Le James' on skype and rog_beta on WPN let me know too, I'm in the process of gathering as much info as I can about him.

Thanks

Adam.

I confirm everything 4BetBoke said and i got scammed in same way by same user.

Instead of posting a warning for his fellow players, someone PMed me the following. I know it's not good form to post PMs received, so I've removed his username. However, adding the content for search purposes may help others in the future:

"So I know you are really busy banging on people like myself who forget to post our screen names on things but I would appreciate some help here or at least a point in the right direction..........

I have never had a trade or trader scam me until recently. I came home yesterday to a blocked Party account thanks to a recent transfer from a 2+2 post I made.......

I was approached by someone on Skype named Herve Probst stating he had seen a 2+2 post of mine. After doing some research it seemed legit. So we traded and the trade came from iettejink and I sent BOA and he sent Party. I played a couple of days and left town.

I come home yesterday to a blocked Party account questioning my transfer with him and the site stating their was an investigation into the account transfer. Today I come home to fin out Party has reversed the transfer and now I am out 1K.....

If we are going to have a site like this I feel like you all should probably speak against the scammers as much you correct the people with the simple mistakes....

We shall see?"

(I can't find iettejink or Herve Probst mentioned anywhere else on TPT so the alleged scammer may not be a user here.)

I have him (Herve Probst) in my Skype contacts... we were going to trade Party for Stars a couple months back but I didn't go through with it. Let me see if I can find his 2p2 nick

*

Edit/MH: "User name is banned already: mpicky"

So, rather than post about it, said member figures he's going to test you as he has some bizarrely misguided idea that you are all about infracting people and don't care about outting scammers. LOL.

I did a trade with a Skype user of that name too around October 9 - $2k Stars for Skrill. He sent Stars first and I sent back Skrill USD - haven't had any issues. Regardless, here's the info I have on him:

"jarryace from 2+2" < looks like this account isn't banned yet.

me: "And what’s your Skrill info?"
Hervé, 7:10 PM: 24kgilded

email on his Skrill account:
fully616@yahoo.com

He pinged me a few more times about smaller transfers on other sites but I wasn't looking so haven't dealt with him since the initial trade.

Not really sure exactly what's going on with this whole situation, but seems likely that the guy I traded with is legit (v established player, the homework I did before trading with him came back clean, and our trade went smoothly), and the PM Mike got is about someone impersonating him. Hopefully we'll learn more soon, but just want to make sure I don't smear a straight shooter in the process of tracking down the scammer.

*

Edit/MH: See

I'm 24kgilded. I'm NOT Herve Probst.

I did though two 2k transfers my stars for his party. Had later issues with Party, as his money was called `fraudulent` by their security department. Can send proof if needed.

*

Edit/MH: "Party account was divemikk."

I am still gonna pay this I haven't forgot and I will send you the extra $15 cause its taking a long time. I should be receiving money around the 27th of December then I can send to your ACR. Wanted to let you know. You can reban me until I send it now or permanent whatever it is mods.

we agreed on trading 1k this way. he received on stars (dolmren) to (Vex Leidhus) and confirmed this.


then he disappeared and just came back with nonsense messages and went on/off again. just a brief warning to everyone, more in the feedbackthread. hopefully this is just a technical issue.

here is what happened. 2p2 user "DavaiNikolai" had around 40-50 posts, and I saw him regularly post over the last two weeks. I fell for him and thought he was trustful. below is the full skyoe transcript with skype user "kjellsen0r", screenname "eppo".

I then realized it's highly possible I got scammed. I contacted stars and stayed awake for a couple hours, finally as an exception the transferred the 1010$ back to my stars (dolmren).

Mike Haven then told me via PM about his suspicions and other nicks that most likely are related to this incident.

I havent heard back from eppo/Davai/Lex since.

my stars account has been frozen about this. I am asked to contact him and "resolve" the situation.

@Mike: can he be temporarily be unblocked to resolve the situation with me? apparently he is not able to use skype at all, or he still tries to scam me by involving pokerstars.

having my acc frozen atm is a big issue for me

I'm sorry to hear that. Have you given PS Security the full details of why you decided you did not wish to try to trade with Vex Leidhus/ DavaiNikolai? As it stands, assuming your posts above are accurate, neither of you is at any financial loss, so perhaps PS would accept that it is unreasonable to continue to freeze your account?

I handed PS full info (skype log, my thoughts along, my posts and PMs regarding this on 2p2) and a link to the tradind thread.

I was indeed lucky. This outcome shows that this particular scammer even contacted stars after it was reinstated and claimed that me, the scammed one, is the scammer himself.

Poor poker world, lucky me. Thanks for the help and everything Mike!

Lucky?! Let me know when you play BJ and I'll Bet Behind, fo sho!

whats the best way to communicate with others when doing transfers re security? as skype gets a bit of a bad wrap. noob question ye.

Once you have confirmed identity by PM here and access to the relevant funds with a quick few words at the relevant poker table/s, Skype is fine, imo.

When you say identity do you mean my name or pokersite name, is pokersite name enough?

By pokersite screen name (SN), I mean your potential trading partner's SN, and that should be enough unless you are ultra-cautious.

Once you receive the other party's PM, you can check his posts and see if others have traded successfully with him in the past; you can check if he or others have provided his SN in the past; you can check how long he has been a user here; you can check the types and regularity of posts he has made here; you can search for his SN here and on Google to see if posts have been made about him.

When you try to chat with him on a poker table, if he says his chat has been barred, he's probably a scammer impersonating a player that doesn't chat while playing, so give him a miss. If you have no money on a poker site and can't sit to chat with him, ask him to say something specific while you are watching him on a table - perhaps, "Trading TPT a*** with M*** H****"; or, if watchers' chat is allowed, use it. Maybe $1 can be transferred to allow you to chat at a micro-stake table? (Keep a screenshot of the table chat, and copies of Skype chat, for later proof to the pokersite if something goes wrong.)

Don't take chances if you have any suspicions. Don't transfer in single amounts that you can't afford to lose - treat each trade like you would a bet.

Most, but not all, of the scammers that try to take advantage of new, naive or careless users here are fairly new users themselves, (as far as their latest account is concerned); have posted one-liner comments, often one after another, to build up a post-count to appear to be established regulars; state they need a quick trade to, say, enter a tournament; and try to persuade their marks to transfer in larger amounts than necessary for ordinary first-off deposit needs to play a few games until mutual trust is established.

Once delays creep into transferring back, which should be virtually immediate, whatever excuses are made, report the delay in the Transfers Chat thread. You can always post again if the transfer is completed, but make sure you have a contact point outside TPT as they will probably be banned here at least temporarily until the transfer is completed.

Read the Transfers Thread's opening post (OP), thoroughly. Search thoroughly. Keep thorough records of all conversations.

Good luck, and remember the phrase, "Let the buyer beware". If you are scammed, you are usually very lucky if you ever see your money again.

I'm not sure this is correct format for posting this, but just wanted to give some credit to Austin (Dalsue214). This past week I approached him about trading some Black Chip Poker funds for Bitcoin, and we started the first of the transfers last night. We started the first with 400 and 600, and plan to continue in the next several days due to my limit on p2p. I sent first, and he sent next in a very timely manner. I would highly recommend using him as he not only was very helpful, but he also gave me what I consider great rates.

On a side note I have used Dan (depechebkn) for multiple thousands over the past year, and he is also a great trader, and very helpful even when it doesn't involve trades.

If most newish players like me they have trouble finding good reliable people to trade with so I decided to make this post as a recommendation/review for anyone this might help in the future. Thanks

Can you do P2P transfers on Ignition?

No.

****

Happy new year everyone. I thought I'd give a quick update to this situation regarding theft and scamming by Matt Longfellow of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Matt Longfellow is a repeat offender, having stolen from/scammed members of the poker community multiple times.

In the days after myself and the other (known) victim compiled a dossier, tracked him down, and made clear we expected him to make this right, Matt made a payment of ~12% of the money stolen and then made another payment on September 15 to take us to 26% recovered of the total amount stolen. In between periods of threatening me and ignoring several attempts to make arrangements, he occasionally would say the right things and insist he planned to pay us despite personal difficulties. His story is that a third party related to him is responsible for the actual theft, but that doesn't really pass the smell test given some information we have. He's also refused to actually identify the supposed alternative thief beyond a vague descriptor on multiple occasions. In spite of the fact that we didn't believe him at all and it seems pretty obvious that he's just continued his pattern of treating the poker community like his personal piggy bank to scam from whenever he hits a rough patch, we humored him and were willing to let sleeping dogs lie if we were repaid.

Unfortunately, after giving him ridiculous amounts of benefit of the doubt over 4+ months, keeping him apprised at every step how we intended to proceed, and bending over backwards in an attempt not to put someone with a young daughter in jail, he's failed to follow through numerous times and my patience is now over. Even after making good money over the past 2.5 months at Tom O'Brien Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Indy, Matt Longfellow has refused to maintain contact and hasn't made any payment since mid-September. Given that, today I'm posting here and getting the legal process moving, both criminally and civilly, starting with making sure all relevant state, local, and federal agencies are aware of him and anyone else involved. I have reason to believe his spouse may be as well.

I'm also the reluctant but proud owner of mattlongfellowisathief.com, which will go live in the next 2-3 weeks for all of the right people's viewing pleasure if there's no change in status. The last time Matt and I chatted before he broke contact again, he mentioned that he's trying to find a backer, so I figured it's worth updating the community on what kind of person he is.

A few of the highlights:
-Made personal threats
-Broke contact for 5 weeks when a payment was due
-Went on an MTT heater and made ~15k on a stake - made no effort to pay.
-Made a small payment via Western Union, only to cancel the payment before I could collect it.
-Has now again broken contact for over 2 weeks despite outreach attempts on 6 separate days via 2 separate means of communication, and us telling him a payment mid-November was the last straw before giving him one more shot in December and him assuring me a payment was on the way as recently as December 13th.