pursue serious legal action against the hotel for negligence, and unlawful act to conspire.

Lee, you're more competent than that. That's all you can muster up? Sorry man, but that's the weakest response I could think of given the situation. The victims here have clearly been mistreated and they're certainly not your employees.

How about starting with a REAL CONTACT (surprisingly not everyone reads 2+2) with anyone who have participated in the event and stayed at Arts. You know the majority who they are and warn them about it. It's something you should've done the minute you found out there has been multiple people compromised. I know it's not good for the Stars, Arts or EPT brand, but it's something you HAVE TO DO. If you have to give out a press release, then you have to do it so that your players' accounts and hole cards aren't compromised. Thus far I've seen nothing at Pokerstars, EPT.com or even on effin Twitter, and it's been DAYS since this thing started to balloon.

Your head of security is doing everything he can? Then he is incompetent if he buys stories (and you?!) of camera footage suddenly showing up, when the victims have been told the cameras have been out of order for a week... which to me sounds quite amazing as well. If you haven't figured out thus far the hotel security is taking you for a ride, it's bloody hard to take Pokerstars' actions seriously. It is impossible.

That response was such a travesty it put me probably even on worse tilt than reading Jeans' story yesterday. I gotta go get hammered. This ia a disgrace and you have to do better than this. At least let the EPT players know!

It's pretty clear what Lee is saying, if you guys want to read random conjecture into it or twist his words then that's your choice but to me some of you are being pretty childish and not offering anything extra by nitpicking.

'There's no evidence hotel staff are involved' is clearly stating at the moment PS aren't aware of any solid evidence i.e. via security cameras that hotel staff are involved. He's not saying 'hotel staff aren't involved as there's no evidence'.

Wow I had to point that out?

If this is true, I find it ironic that I've stayed in 100+ hostels and never had a single thing stolen (granted I don't have many expensive things with me).

[QUOTE=Lee Jones;40050535] Other staffers have given up time off and meals to attend meetings with hotel security people.

Hey it might not be much but Ray Bitar wouldn't of given up his lobster for this investigation.

[QUOTE=ex_Noose;40051085]

How about starting with a REAL CONTACT (surprisingly not everyone reads 2+2) with anyone who have participated in the event and stayed at Arts. You know the majority who they are and warn them about it. It's something you should've done the minute you found out there has been multiple people compromised. I know it's not good for the Stars, Arts or EPT brand, but it's something you HAVE TO DO.

This is right on. We've all been on 2+2 when it's been hacked and the next time you log in there's a message explaining to EVERYONE on the site that they are investigating, will be down for a couple days and to change your passwords. Even if you don't shut down for a couple days the message has to be put out there for all the players to see.

nice choice of words, somewhat clutching at straws though

this is so scary

This sounds like the plot of a heist movie - it's exactly the kind of story today's tabloid media loves to report on. If you want someone to take action, start telling your story to the major media outlets.

TheCooler1 prolly knows who did it

How do we know the intentions of stealing/borrowing the laptop? Was it to plant trojans or was it to chip dump? Has the laptop been inspected? Have you done anything with the laptop since getting it back?

I assume you logged onto another computer and changed all the passwords.

What would be really scary is if someone took your computer and didnt do anything to it but made you think they did. Then you got to a new computer and changed your passwords and the recovered the new ones and then had free reign on your accounts for a few days bc you wouldnt have a computer to log onto. I guess at this point, anything is possible.

My first post said that the police were involved. I was wrong about that; in the confusion, I thought that we had contacted the police but we hadn't. The mistake is mine and I take full responsibility for it.


Can you be any less vague? How do you mistake contacting the police, makes no sense unless there is a reasonable excuse that you can enlighten us with?

Good advice, bro Hacking the WiFis in and around the hotel to get the new passwords, steal your money. The "Good stuff" is u may see that too late cuz you are afraid to log on on your laptop, because you think it's hacked.

cliffs please

@Jeans, sick, sick, sick story. I just wanted give you one advice. As mentioned above, these guys might very well know who you are, as a pokerplayer online and a real person offline, hence you got targeted. Please be very wary with your updates in this topic because if this is true (which I really think it is, why else would there would be a laptop replacal instead of laptop stealing), it means these buttcracks will most definitely read and follow this topic.

You make me suspicious.

After this I'd throw the comp in the sea. No way I would use it for anything ever again.

But yea, it really seems like the staff is in on this somehow or they might just be very very bad at their job (which doesn't make too much sense, 5 star hosting EPT...).

I just registered to add some advices from IT professional's PoV. First of all, even if no malware will be found on your laptop, you can't be sure that it's safe to use. Hardware keyloggers are ultra small nowadays and they are quite easy to install and if the person who did it knew what he was doing, he could have done this in a matter of minutes. You need to be sure that the hardware hasn't been compromised, not only software.
Full check made by a real security expert would cost approximately as much as a new laptop(and I wouldn't trust anyone who asks only 100$ for such a difficult task), so the smartest choice would be to throw the damn thing away.

Also, if the data you keep on your laptop is much more valuable than the hardware, be sure to use full disk encryption. For windows users the best solution is also the cheapest one - truecrypt.org is de facto standard in IT business and it's completely free. Mac users could just use Apple's FileVault(it isn't as good as truecrypt, because it won't probably protect you from NSA/CIA/FBI, but anyone else won't be able to access your data). Yes, you will be required to enter one more password before you will be able to login to your device, but it could save you thousands of dollars. Don't you think it's wort it?

Is pokerstars not taking this seriously? I contacted a friend who is involved half an hour ago about the incident and he did not know anything about it! WARN EVERYONE IN THE HOTEL!!!!!!!

Seems likely to me they took and returned the laptop the second time to undo anything they did to it the first time once they realized they were caught. The guilty party obviously knew jeans and his roommate were moved and wouldn't get the device back by just placing it in the room.

two questions for OP:

1. did you ever see the logs for second time your laptop went missing? seems that if you had another sample, more connections could be drawn.

2. when you went down to resync your key for the first time, what sort of credentials did they ask you for? or was it a case where you had already dealt with the front desk and they knew who you were.

reason for question #2:

the behavior of key 3EDC24 is super strange. tries unsuccessfully to unlock the room, comes back ~25 minutes later to try again. still nothing. comes back 3 minutes later (which is close to the same amount of time it took the OP to resync his key) and it works fine.

the part that doesn't make sense is why would this person try so many times with a key that obviously wasn't working. furthermore, comes back 3 minutes later and POOF works like a charm.

Don't be.

Jeans and 0human0 is probarly very pissed off.

They plays cheaters every day at in the highstakes PLO Pokerstars and FTP cashgames.

Then they go to Barcelona Pokerstars EPT and there is scam and cheat attempt at them there as well.

When will Pokerstars take players best interest by protecting them against cheaters seriously?

This is not good for poker reputation and will only get worse unless they act.

I can't call myself a computer expert, but I know enough. I'm pretty sure a reformat might not be enough. It would not take care of the BIOS, for example. Ditch the laptop or bring it to an expert.

Pokerstars is top notch when it comes to integrity and I think they should not 'get a pass' so to speak but at the very minimum have our utmost trust. They are and have been #1 for a long time.
I personally have had dealings with their security team and they forthright and fair.

It is not inconveivable that Lee thought that the police had been contacted and they hadn't as he didn't say that HE himself had contacted them. In all fairness, this is PS biggest poker tournament in Europe of the year and they are there to conduct that , not a thorough police investigation into breaking and entering/robbery/fraud etc etc

Lee made a bunch of good points for players to heed to in terms of security which should be helpful and Ignat, Henri, and Jeans should consider themselves EXTREMELY lucky and move forward.

It's actually pretty admirable for Lee to come in and post when literally nothing positive can come from up and he's just going to get bashed for his incompetence when in actuality they are doing everything they can.

Hope Jeans and company never have to go through this again and that this story gets linked to every poker player around.