How exactly did this clown "charm" you into giving him 100k?

I'm sure that the way to expedite the return of your money is to refer to the guy as a scumbag, that always helps

1. Hawkins is a complete scumbag. As such, I'm just going to assume that what OP is alleging is true. Hawkins by no means deserves the benefit of the doubt. He is the nut low.

2. OP, you say you're a business owner. A restaurateur. A quick internet search confirms this. Your business venture even appears quite successful. But for your sake but MOST ESPECIALLY your company's sake, I hope you stay far away from key financial decisions. How in the hell did you not do the most basic of background checks, which was just googling Maurice Hawkins' name? His low reputation has been known and discussed on various message boards for a long time. A cursory internet search lasting all of five minutes would have saved you from all the hassle.

If I were your business partner, I'd be very nervous.

How about you read the ****ing OP of the thread before you write a reply to it? He wasn't given 100k, he was staked and then binked a bunch of stuff, worth 100k to the staker (OP)

Bottom line - Staking poker players is a losing proposition! I've staked a couple in small buy-in tournaments and taken pieces of a few in larger events. A couple of them are well known names in the poker world. Being on "make-up" sounds good but in reality it means almost nothing. One (name) player who I took a piece of didn't cash, but in his next event he finished second for a healthy score. When I asked him about making up for his prior loss he said I wasn't in on this one. When I asked him about "make-up" he said we didn't specify that ahead of time. This, after he told me how "make-up" works!

Another name player stiffed me for a measly $200 after cashing for 10K and making a saver with me for 5%. He gave me $300 and told me he couldn't give me any more. A week earlier I had given him $1,750 on a 5% saver when I cashed for 35K (at the WSOP). I was stunned but said nothing at the time. Later I confronted him and got paid.

I've also loaned small amounts of money (under 1K) to a few players to play in an event or cash game, with the understanding I would be paid back. To date, zero has come back to me, even when I've seen a couple of them with healthy cash stacks on the table in front of them.

All this said I'd rather be on my end of it then theirs. I sleep good at night and have managed my finances well. I have come to realize that most of these guys are degenerate gamblers who will never hold onto any money.

I've had a lot more success betting on myself, so that's what I stick to now. Lesson learned.

You are correct, my bad. Either way doing business with this scumbag in the first place was a poor decision.


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So when you stake somebody in particular tournament he is your debtor forever? Is this some gang law school?

Well, to be blunt, you were not a very good backer in terms of doing any kind of due diligence. Assuming all of what you mentioned was correct (and it likely was) then in one case you did not properly understand how makeup would work (often for live event based backing it is a one time shot, though if it is a package of tournaments then makeup usually applies within that package). Other cases it sounds like you lent money to people when you had it, and some do that to feel better about themselves and soon realize that the vast majority of people who ask for money are not the ones who should be given money (unless you give it to them to never have to speak to them again, which some have done as a tactic).

Well, yes and no. I certainly agree that calling someone a "scumbag" is a bit pointless, even if valid, but people like the main character in this thread will nearly always use the "if you tell anyone, then I will not pay you back" line of attack/defence.

As a general rule of thumb, once they say a variant of that (and the "you attacked my manhood" qualifies)- they are never intending to pay back anything, so alerting other backers and the community and taking legal action (if possible) is the correct approach at that time.

You are absolutely right! I took a chance on someone who had a "name" in the poker world. I was a lot smarter later on when TJ asked me a for a 3K loan just for the day (he was supposedly getting some money that night). I inquired about his honesty during a break and was informed that anything I loaned him would be gone forever (a gift to the crap tables). I declined his request and to this day he has never spoken to me again.

Related to the topic, but maybe should be in a thread of its own and I don't claim to know who did or didn't do anything in this particular situation.

There are all too many stories like this and the guy isn't hard to find, Chris Ferguson was walking the hallways and parking lots of the RIO this summer, as was Howard Lederer. TO my knowledge NYPK never paid back a dime (again, I don't know). I mean there is literally story after story of guys doing **** like this and not being very hard to find, yet nothing ever happens to them.

I'm not encouraging vigilante justice, but I am wondering why it doesn't happen? I know some people who have gotten beat downs for MUCH less and yet in some of these stories people have stolen hundreds of thousands and even millions are missing yet nothing happens.

I lived in a neighborhood you got your ass kicked for taking someone's parking place, how does the entire poker community not have anyone to "handle" things like this?

Makes you wonder if we are actually hearing the truth, ever.

Im sure scammers evaluate their marks on the likelihood they’ll deal out ass kickings. Probably no mistake he borrowed from a restaurateur and not the local bookie or 1% motorcycle club

I guess one way that you can realize the answer to that would be to tell everyone here (given your ass kicking parking based upbringing) - how much do you charge to inflict severe bodily harm on people like this? If you will not do it, then how come? Do they need to take your parking space first? If you had lost a few hundo on Full Tilt, would you bum-rush any of these characters in the Rio? If not, why not?

The reality is that giving a beatdown is much easier said than done (with or without parking implications) - and actually doing it comes with likely severe consequences as well, and that usually deters people from implementing "street justice" when no parking aspects are involved. Obviously some off-legal forms of lending (like in the post above) greatly increase the chance of violence being the form of collection, but in general the staking/poker buddy lending industry is separate from that, and I doubt there are too many negative feedback threads for the bookie industry.

the real question is someone loaning the money ever broke because of the loaning?

Make-up is a thing for long-running staking arrangements. Not when you buy a piece of someone in one or multiple events..

That is not the real question at all and it's not even a thing to discuss

Sorry for being so rude, I was playing a losing session when writing it

In college, we would lend people money who had gone broke...this was 30 years ago, and we were playing .25/.50 limit with silly games including jokers. A big win was $40...and the winner would often buy drinks in the campus bar afterwards.

However, I learned then, that were two outcomes, both negative: The player would take the loan, win, and take your money. Or lose again, and you would be chasing him down for the next week over less than $20 (and it was always the same players), often settling for less as the student would guilt you into taking less...pleading poverty etc...

We had one good reason to loan money though...to keep the game going.

In professional poker, the games continue anyway. Why would anyone loan a nickel to a stranger...especially a poker player who are known for having gambling issues amongst other things.

Think its crazy how a guy can get stiffed for 100k then people on here want to give him crap about it. Maybe he should have looked into things a bit more, either way its still a huge sum to be owed.

amazing someone can lend a scumbag like this money after they owed them a ton of money for being staked they barely paid back

there's no maybe about it. hawkins is scum and in 2019 this isn't exactly hard to find out.yes the blame goes to hawkins for being a pos but the op deserves some as well. he didn't stake some guy with a stellar reputation who all of the sudden started scamming out of nowhere.

Basically I agree. Op should have looked into it more but its still a ton of money to be owed and then get given crap over.

Looks like Maurice is losing his mind on twitter.

He responded with this about 50 times:






some other gems

scumbags always blame the lender when they don't have the money they owe and act like they were doing the lender a favor with whatever pittance they did pay back.

i really hope they next time this pos wants a loan or stake people actually google him first.

I feel for the original poster, but once you file a lawsuit, it is very stupid to go public.

Didn't your lawyers tell you that?

Filing a lawsuit is going public, by definition.

For once I would like to see a happy ending from one of these things and by that I mean a beat down

What assets do you think Maurice has to seize that gives OP any chance of getting paid even if he gets a judgment??? You think 13 WSOP circuit rings are going to go for 103,000... if he hasn’t pawned them off yet. The only chance of ever receiving money in situations like this is a settlement and usually leveraging public opinion is powerful but unfortunately for OP Maurice’s reputations so bad he has nothing to protect.

If anything going public helped the case cause Maurice admitted to the loan, had already agreed to a payment plan then broke it, and refused to negotiate a new payment plan.