Bruiser, entertain me, please explain what you would have done to investigate and assure the quality of your sponsor.

I rarely ever lend money. I did it once and I got screwed. I've said no countless times in the past year to people. So right away I was uncomfortable with the idea of lending, it's always risky imo, especially when its to an overseas online company, where you'd have little chance of recovering your money if something went wrong. I did it because I felt the risk/reward was there, I didn't think they were likely to go under as I mentioned in my OP.

Ugh. Sick. Sorry to hear this.

Along these lines, I have a small confession to make. I've never played at Microgaming, but at one point I was going to deposit somewhere since they had (have?) some decent MTT's, and was looking at Eurolinx to do it because everyone on 2+2 liked them. Then I saw a BBV thread about them advertising this FPP package:

After I saw that, depositing with them was out of the question and I wondered whether to post an NVG thread about them right then and there. The thing is, because I had recently won some stock, it felt wrong for me to start going on crusades against every other site in the industry (lol I guess I had to save that for the *other* "CEO steals people's money" story). On top of that I had no information that anything was wrong with them other than that one act of incredible shadiness. So I never did.

I obviously wish I had done something now, but to make up for it, this might help with any possible criminal charges.

Thank you so much for doing this. This needs quoting again.

Bruiser,
I think you are very out of line putting this back on Marc. I know 100s of people in poker and I can tell you first hand he is the most trustworthy person I know. I can also say I knew Marc before he knew what eurolinx was and he was very cautious about his relationship with them. They paid over 100k in buy-ins for him and he had over a million dollars in his account at one point. There is no way he would ever know this is coming. In the last 2 months Marc still believed in Jo and at the end of the day he kept telling his friends that he personally stood more to lose than anyone. Let's remember though that for over 2 years we had no issues with eurolinx. They were a great site and did everything for ther customers. All of a sudden everything went bad a few months ago. I think its ok to say you don't feel sorry for Marc because he trusted the wrong people but its very wrong imo to question the integrity of one of the most honest people I've ever met. You have to understand which you probably don't that Marc is not just a pro poker player he is a roll model for our entire poker community. There are not too many pros who still take the time to goto $40 homegames with their friends and people who still want to play with him, this is a guy who busts deep at the wsop or loses a 30k pot and will still take time to give advice to someone who asks him about a hand they played at the final table of a 4.40. You seriously have a lot of nerve questioning someone's integrity like this however I guess its your right as an idiot to do so.

where did the money go plz

Some observations:

For a site to be making so much money, a lot else has to be going on for a site like that to lose money. You can't just accidently pay more to acquire players than they're making you. That site was raking a lot of money. For them to have financial problems, chances are something much bigger than bad management was going on. You wouldn't just kill a cash cow like that, you'd fix it. However, it seems like their plan the whole time was to kill it. The question is why?

Several months ago I looked into the payouts they were making to players. If you look through all the posts in the 'eurolinx withdrawals' thread and you talk to a lot of players, you'll realize that they were paying out the majority of players in around a months time. However, they were keeping a significant % of the actual money, and NOT paying it out. Everyone's line in the company was, "no, we aren't having liquidation problems", but it was pretty clear that something wasn't right.

What they were doing, was letting people with not a lot of money cashout. So, if you had $1,000 and wanted to cash out, you'd get it. If you had a few thousand to cashout, you'd get it. Sometimes it'd take 2 weeks, sometimes 4, sometimes maybe a bit over a month, but as you'll notice in the cashouts thread there players were reporting they got it in around a month or so. The company was claiming more banking checks or something(I forget the exact wording they kept using) This could not have been true though. I mean, sure, it could be true, but it could not have been the reason for what was going on. If you wanted to cash out a larger amount, chances are you would not receive the cashout. Players trying to cashout a decent amount of money would not receive their money. If you contacted them a lot of times, you would possibly at some point get moved up the chain/passed on to someone else who could supposedly help you. Some players after a lot of emails/live support chats would see their cashouts in 2+ months.(players with decent sized cashouts) Note: This is when anyone/everyone from Eurolinx laughed off the question that there may be liquidation problems. They promised there were absolutely no liquidation problems. My personal cashout was only taken care of after many, many, many emails/live chats with Eurolinx and dealing with VIP support/management for several weeks(total cashout time close to 2 months), finally ending in dealing with Jo Remme. I had mentioned several times I was a poster at 2+2 and needed the situation resolved, and finally a wire came through. I asked for a phone call with Jo Remme several times before/after this and he said he'd call several times, but never did despite several follow up emails from me. I'm pretty sure if I wouldn't have followed up/been a pain in the ass to management to get my cashout I wouldn't have ever seen my money. I have a good feeling their plan was: give cashouts to as many people as possible, for as little as possible. This would create a situation where the majority of people would be posting/updating 2p2 threads saying no worries they received their money and things were fine, just be patient. However, the guys who had a lot of money to cashout were the ones not seeing it. So, if there's 20 cashouts to make, they'd pay out the 18 people with $1k cashouts, and the 2 guys with $30k to cashout they would not pay out. So they pay out $18k to get people promoting that everything's okay at Eurolinx almost as an advertising budget so that people would keep playing/depositing, but they keep $60k.

Also, not sure how many realized since I haven't seen it in this thread yet, but Eurolinx did some big bonus promotion to get deposits right before they shut it's doors.

Also, something else to note is that Eurolinx's 2p2 rep(Lydia) stopped working there right as the Eurolinx cashout problems thread started. Not sure if she and other people at Eurolinx knew what was going on, but if they did and they left because of it, not sure what benefits they had to not say anything about it.

That's what OP and a bajillion others are trying to find out.

Ok. is see much speculation. Also that it went good with Eurolinx the first 2 years. Jo Remme said to me in a telephone conversation that they were trading with funds. I have been a stockbroker for 11 years. No lets see... When did Eurolinx get in trouble. As Marc said Jo asked him for money a year ago. When did the stockmarket, real estate, commodities plunge?? RIGHT a few months before that. So in my believe they had a couple of great years with trading but took a big hit after all assets plunged.

So i really think he wasn't lying that time. Also because i think he had the hope that the markets would recover more then they did. But when so many players ask for there money it wasn't possible to get out of this mess. Be honest if u had your money u would never play there again, right?

Is this Bruiser clown serious? Have you never recommended something to someone without getting their trust inked in blood? Come on man. You look ridiculous with your claims. I'm sure you've told a friend to play on a certain site before simply because you gained a benefit from it and because they've treated you well.

Hell, you'll never get a job with your claims. Simply for the reason you'll need to investigate the company from top to bottom and do background checks on every single person in the company and all their lenders just to feel secure.

Thanks for the laugh though.

Good luck OP and everyone effected. Sorry to hear .

You have got to be ****ting me. Am I understanding this correctly? Eurolinx were offering a service to their customers in which they would help you hide your money so you don't have to pay taxes in your specific country?

Marc, did the owner have any ties to the owner of Pokerlistings.com who was killed?

They say they offer legal advice, how shonky it is would depend on what kind of advice they were giving. In many countries there are ways of keeping money overseas that can reduce your tax bill without violating any laws. If they were just telling people how to (legally) better structure their finances to reduce their tax burden I don't see anything wrong with that. It certainly feels like a red flag, and knowing what we do now I don't think anyone would be surprised if it turns out they were advocating illegal behavior - but on the face of it there's nothing necessarily wrong with it.

limos, hotels, helicopters, cocaine, call girls, and currency trading.

(NB> this is pure speculation on my part. But it is a very safe bet that
no funds will be recovered.)

sick story wish u gl op

but the owner(was he the owner of the site ?) is asking U(a good costumer at this site) to lend him 200k, wow that would sound so sick to me even with the best deals in the world i would be sooo sceptical.

i mean he is asking one of their customers to help them out with money ??? 200K ? lol when they asked u 4 the 200k the where prolly already dead.

lol@ a pokersite is asking a player at their site to lend them money. wow



bad en

yep i agree, and cannot understand how someone lends the money

Sorry for OT but Party stole my money by "inactive account fee" when I had almost a year break from poker. Would not recommend the site for anyone.

You had like $1M in your Eurolinx account and they asked you to loan them $200k, rather than simply stealing it? I mean, surely you paid them from your Eurolinx balance... if they were intending to scam players all along I wonder what's the point of ASKING for a loan rather than simply investing player funds without permission. Does this mean that they were trying to run a legitimate business until they realized it was no longer possible to save the company, and then they made a run for the money?

The whole loan thing strikes me as weird.

It's hard to imagine they weren't trying to run a legitimate business at the outset. I don't have any info others don't, but just from a common sense point of view it's not in their interests to sabotage their own company. I'm sure they were hoping right until the end that they could keep it running and process cashouts etc.

Pure speculation at this point obv, but most likely explanation in my mind is just sloppy/greedy financial management. They obviously didn't ring-fence player funds in no-loss guaranteed accounts like they were supposed to, or that money would still be available. I'd guess they instead took on investments with some kind of risk, and when that went south kept digging a deeper hole as they took ever riskier lines to recoup funds.

If that is the story it's still completely criminal and nowhere close to okay, certainly not making any attempt to excuse it - but I highly doubt they intended to pull a scam at the beginning.

Sorry guys I am just learning about this whole Eurolinx thing, can someone give me a quick cliffs notes on the entire situation?

Also, how in the world could they go under? It's like the easiest most profitable business model ever.............

I find it in incredible that MGS does not audit all it's skins to ensure this situation does not occur. It's negligent that they don't.

They enter into the agreements with Tusk EL and other skins, surely they must be accountable to some degree. A basic audit would avoid so many of these problems and protect players.

IMO MGS is a very poorly run negligent company.

Isn't this the plot of casino royale? Is Remme Le Chifre?

Remme is gonna host a high stakes poker game at Bobby's Room. $10 million buy in, winner take all. If he loses, he'll have nowhere to run. But if he wins, Tom Dwan will have helped fund terrorism.

no

Link to your avatar clip please.

Also, sick story. Good luck to all of you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M-ewGunb2o


Biz, Don't Get Gassed!

drugs