ah ok thanks, was wondering whether it was a sign that the door had been tampered with prior to the roommate trying to get in but sounds like this is likely what happened

btw the only way that it makes sense to me that the laptop was missing/back/missing is that the thiefs had somehow noticed that you came back to your room, so they brought the laptop back with obv not having finished what they intended to, thats why they then later had to come back. How coudl they have noticed and reacted that quickly?

Also given that they probably knew they had to operate rather quickly and given the short time period it took them to enter your room after you left, it seems possible to me that they could have had a room in the same floor than you.

Regarding them noticing you came back to your room: seems to me either possible by staff members having been involved and them getting notice by someone on you requesting to sync your key, or as i said they had a room in the same floor. I dont know how the floor looked like, but if they had a room directly across from yours for example it would have even been possible for someone to just look through the spyhole the whole time with someone else working on the laptop, just one possibility obv. I would def think it would be helpful if police gets involved to get the names of all the people who had rooms on your floor during that time.

EXACTLY what I thought.

NVG members should write lots of Tripadvisor reviews (and Yelp, btw) and trash them hard.

This will absolutely destroy their business, as many travelers use these sites and will panic when they read about the thefts and break-ins.

Also, Pokerstars bungled this BIG TIME.

Lee, why was such an incompetent Pokerstars security person in charge of a matter like this?

Pokerstars should have someone on hand at all time (at their major events) who is intelligent, aggressive, and empowered to deal with big problems.

It sounds like you guys had a monkey in charge of security there, and this person got manipulated big time by the scumbags working for the hotel.

Awful.

Remember the situation at the PCA where there were super-inconsistent rules regarding a gimmick 1k tournament where people played against playchip games on the site? Many people got screwed out of 1k there, and again there was nobody to step up and set things right as it happened. Obviously a vastly different situation from this, but again contributes to the theme that Pokerstars staffs morons in important positions at major events, and then bad things happen.

1 of 2 options are possible:

1) Either a couple, or several employees of this hotel were involved in a conspiracy.

or

2)0human0 is the perpetrator who was in the room when Jeans came in, and later came up with an elaborate way to cover it up by pretending that the same also happened to him.

Doesn't seem like there is an option #3.

GL but I honestly doubt there could be a further resolution to this at this point.

You understand F-Secure is who discovered what you are accusing them of doing? You have F-Secure mixed up with the real culprit FinFisher and the Gamma Group.

Read the articles you post.

That's one of the first things I thought of.. these dudes were right across the hall from you..

That was the initial reaction the hotel gave. But since the hotels' reputation and poker stars' is on the line, as well as the direction the players spend there money the police are going to be on this. Not to mention attempted crimes are still crimes. This is an extreme amount of money these people were messing with.

**** man this story gives me the creeps! I'm alone right now and about to go to bed and even though I'm a grown ass man I'm scared as ****!

Wow...this is how high stakes cash/tournament players get treated by Pokerstars...you get false information from Lee Jones and a half azz attempt by their security team. They did do a fine job though, putting/"setting" Jeans up in that hotel.

But poker players are second class citizens I guess. Could you imagine if it was found out that Rory Mcilroy's hotel stuff got tampered with at a golf tournament. People would be fired or in jail by now lol.

You are correct, Sir. I was wrong. I can admit it. My apologies. I retract my pevious statement.

According to poker news they have a guy on camera?

Since you gotten the free hotel package as part of your tournament entry deal, do you think the front desk knows which customer is part of this deal when its being booked? Wonder how Pokerstars staff go about booking these people in.

How about this. Stars finds a contractor to build mini lockers like then have in schools cept small enough for a laptop to fit resting on its side to save space. I won't even take a guess at the cost of doing this but this will be a one time deal anyway... I'm sure this won't break them. Supply key locks and sign them out to players who need them. Them comp a room to store the lockers and have a stars security team member inside the room at all times to baby sit them. At no point and time is the door opened for anyone other then for a relief security team member or room service. Can't have him/her live like a hermit and starve.

Charge the players a small fee to cover labor costs or at the very least, take x percentage out of each prize pool to cover it. With all the tournaments going on this will hardly be noticeable.

Have the players sign an agreement that if they choose to use this service, that they'll only be able to collect their laptop at the end play for that day to avoid extra running around/escorting for stars security. If they go busto in the first blind level, oh well. It's a small inconvenience, more so for players who have never been overseas before. I am sure they can find something to do for 8 or so hours. The player then contacts the security head who creates a name list, gather in the lobby at the end of play and wait for the security head, and all go up at the same time.

And if a player doesn't think this is a great idea, then they can opt out. Easy peasy.


Pretty easy solution to insure that this never happens again, no?

holy mother of god,one if the sickest stories ive ever heard , scary as **** tho

Should have gone to the police inmediately

This is stars' biggest European tournament and les arts is the only hotel which can host the tournament as its conference centre is physically linked to the casino next door (the only casino in Barcelona).

You can see why a lot of people have a vested interest of sweeping this under the carpet.

Across the hallway seems unlikely given that there were likely lots of people affected so that is unlikely to be part of the plan as they would have to rent a lot of rooms. Maybe I'm misreading the situation but it seems like what probably happened was that they did what they needed, took the laptop back and then found out that Jeans was onto them (either had someone tell them that it was being investigated or the guy was actually hiding in the bathroom when Jeans came back to find the laptop in the room the first time). Either way they then decided that they should delete all traces of what they did from the laptop so the investigation would die quickly, stole it again, wiped all traces of what they did and the laptop is prob clean now.

this is actually super sick how the casino hotel gives you the run around i would 100% get a lawyer involved with such sick time frames like 2 mins inbetween when you left almost seems like a inside job

THIS

link?

All seems pretty premature to me. It doesn't matter much if bad reviews go on the site today or next week; why not give it a few days to see how everything pans out? I'm not for a second going to argue that this was well-handled; all indications are the opposite thus far. But it seems to make more sense to let this play out to more of a conclusion before jumping all over review websites.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...g-pca-1290129/

makes more sense, true. I just realized it doesnt make the most sense that they bring the laptop back to steal it later again when they found out jeans saw it was stolen. Could have just kept it then if they wanted to finish their work, unless they thought he would maybe believe he had just overlooked it but that would be pretty optimistic.

I still think though for the thiefs to have had a room in each floor of the players targeted is likely

Cant believe there is no stars reaction yet. At least to say the well know "we are aware of the situation and doing our best to solve it. We are working on this case and it's our top priority."

This is the biggest stars tournament so it is so sick there are no rep here. Mayby im wrong, but something smells here very bad. Im pretty sure they know something big which we dont know as always.

Joshua Tyler and Matt Marafioti, where were you around 15:30 that day?

Going to be a couple staff members working together. With that quick of a turnaround, it has to be someone with the ability to sync a key to the closest open room on target's floor. He grabs laptop, let's himself into room on same floor, and then goes to work. He got interrupted by Jeans getting eliminated, hears, sees, or possibly gets a call from in vicinty of front desk that he's coming back up, and doesn't have time to return it given the quick turnaround, so it comes off sloppy, but it has to be someone with the ability to get keycard for any vacant room closest to a target for it to make sense. I doubt someone is riding up and down elevators with a stolen laptop in that quick amount of time.


I am guessing the fact that Ignat and him were both pw protected created the sloppiness. There are probably going to be other players who weren't pw protected emerge in the future. In their case, they will only know their card didn't work, but the computer will be back in the room before they come back with new key, and won't be the wiser until they get killed at the tables by some new player who is right far too often.

awful awful situation....

but i gotta say jeans, after seeing that you returned to the room at the PERFECT time, glad to see you still got some of that RUNGOOD, and used some of it to save other people from getting hacked!