Quote:
Originally Posted by PTLou
It varies by state as each state has their own gaming laws.
Almost all states have similar language regarding profiting from or facilitating a regulated "game" for money.
"game" has slightly different definitions in each state, but poker would be "game" in all state regs I have any knowledge of.
Authorities have not pursued for the same reason they haven't pursued the clearly illegal cash games that have been running in Houston for years, for example.
One Club based in OH (cant rem the name) shut themselves down six month or so because club owners decided they either had to move out of country or shut down site, as they understood they were breaking the law.
edit. just for fun I pulled up NY law. here is one of their key definitions
https://www.gaming.ny.gov/pdf/Chapter%20174,%20Laws%20of%202013.pdf
I am not a lawyer, but I would imagine it's actually a federal crime in violation of the Wire Act... and Even if not federal in that regard, it's probably a federal crime because he crossed state lines in commission of the crime if he talked to/met with other admins in multiple states and/or exchanged cash/chips in different states and carried them across state lines in the operation of the business.
One of the reasons this stuff doesn't often go that route or come to light is that people being scammed who call them out never get paid, and their only shot at getting paid is keeping their mouth shut and waiting for the cash to roll in from other depositors and hopefully eventually go their way. Also people know it's bad for the poker community for these stories to go public, and some of the victims may prefer to play on other similar poker clubs/sites/whatever rather than bring the whole house of cards down over it.
PPPoker should actually have a lot of incentive to shut him down, given that this type of thing could literally kill their app/business. If I was one of his victims, I'd be considering pursuing that route.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JW31
What I mean by dropped from the poker community is to basically stop giving this clown a platform. He has almost 50K IG followers and he posts his day by day life on there and tons of people support him. I think he’s done enough at this point to warrant blacklisting him in any way possible.
What am I saying that’s wrong?
The poker IG community is in many ways separate from the online poker community and 2p2. It's more based around live games and all, and given that he blocks anyone who calls him out and then gaslights his followers, he's somewhat insulated from any effort to out him as a scammer. Like, multiple people in IG poker community warned about this months ago and said he was a known scammer. I remember guaranteeing to people that he'd scam money off this, and they went and played on it anyway.
He's got a cult-like following on IG because he's very good at promoting his bull**** "brand" on there, and there's very little we can do to change that - especially those of us with no stake in this.
The victims have a few viable avenues to try to get their money back and/or shut him down:
1. Sue him and hope the courts understand enough about illegal online gambling to rule in their favor, and hope he actually has assets they can seize.
2. Report him for his crimes and hope local/federal authorities care.
3. Pressure the app or IG to shut him down.
Hypothetically they could also operate outside the law, but I would never suggest that, don't think it has a lot of upside in terms of getting paid and it has tons of downside in terms of going to jail.