[QUOTE=Jeans;40093660]This is the biggest problem with this case, you and other people like you not understanding the seriosity of the crime. A close friend of mine had this happened to him and lost 300 000 euros before taking his computer to an expert to notice it was contaminated. I also know other people who have lost more than this. I was extremely lucky to come back to my room at the right time so that a crime this serious did not work for me. As others mentioned should attempted murder or rape just be forgotten because nothing actually happened to the victim? And on your examples, it would have to be a very rough beating that I would not take it over a loss of 300 000 euros.[QUOTE=Jeans;40093660]

cmon man. you have a friend that lost 300k and know others that lost more through instances like this and yet you dont even make the most basic precautions to protect your laptop and leave it lying out in a room where strangers visit at least once a day.

absolutely no wonder people keep scamming poker players. but yeh continue to run around moaning at stars, lee jones, hotels etc and accept no responsibily yourself.

That was an amazing and arrogant non-response from Ritz-Carlton. I suggest people start changing their tweets to Ritz-Carlton from Arts Barcelona. Arts is just a tiny part of the Ritz-Carlton empire, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to R-C if Arts’s reputation takes a hit. You can have a lot more impact going after the parent company and their disregard for security.

scroosko, mad because you are unable to make that kind of money? Being young and naive is one thing, being old and bitter is frickin pathetic.


edit: Jeans haven't sprouted blame anywhere, a matter of fact he have been VERY objective on the matter - seriosuly he have had his personal space invaded, aswell as even possibly been in the same room as the perpetrator, he is issuing a warning to everyone else possibly accepted and mad at the lack of help they have recieved throughout the process, EVEN if he had been computer savvy it wouldn't have helped him one bit as alot of computernerds already pointed out because they had physical access to his computer, anything less than trueencrypt or wtf it was named is unsafe. Bios password? unsafe. Windows password? unsafe, and besides all that, physical access also mean potential hardware viruses, go look it up and then go **** yourself.

i think we should stop arguing about 'why it could happen' or whatever ... i guess jeans is smart enough, to learn his lesson.

it's the old 'safety vs comfort' discussion anyway. ppl just tend to get lazy at some point ... eg.. i should do a backup every day ... did mine 8 weeks ago b/c i was busy w/ fam ... last week my laptop crashed #fml

BUT: like jeans several times said, this is a serious crime (even police won't think it's big ... i guess, only the poker community really can understand this) so everyone should think, about what he can do


@ SGT RJ
'PS should buy a boat' needs his own thread imo ^^

lol. if i made that kind of money i would know to take simple precautions to safegaurd it. i just dont get how someone can know of so many instances of this happening and not make a simple effort to prevent it happening to them and then run about blaming everyone under the sun bar themselves when it happens while idiots on forums start quoting it as a terrifying ordeal etc.

its beyond ridiculous. about time people wisened up to the real world. there will be another similar thread where someone has been scammed or compuer compromised within 2 weeks with people saying the same **** and the cycle will keep repeating

I'm starting to think poker players tend to be some of the most naive people on the planet. In Jeans case though, it's not like you'd expect the hotel staff themselves to be colluding against you to this degree, shutting down cameras here and there before hand and what not, it's pretty extreme.

you dont need to be computer savvy. if you put it in a secure laptop case then unless the perpetrator has bolt cutters, welding kit and the skill to do a professional faultless weld then you know someone has been at your computer and its been compromised.

all the best anyway jeans

My belly has never been more out of fire than now..

Not in exactly the same way, as in 5 star hotel with cameras everywhere broken into oceans 11 style. I guess I was wide-eyed but I never thought that was possible. However this has little to do with this thread atm so perhaps another one could be opened if you want to discuss how to increase the security while travelling. Obv I will take precautions next time, that is if I will still play an ept in near future

Just a Q, how much in advance did the hotel know who would be staying in what rooms?

Are you really going here?

No, just showing the poster who was curious about this that the thread was locked and supposedly confirmed bogus.

Some really top notch victim blaming going on ITT, congrats NVG.

Hope you get some restitution for this Jens, good luck.

oh god this thread is going to ****** mode now. how about you people hire the lawyer or call the ceo by yourself, now you guys are like "jeans do this, jeans do that" cmoon people.

lets just hope there will be a good clearness by experts of the players' laptops, and prolly more information about the trojan if there is any.

but after all its very clear it was at least an attempt to hack the pc, not some "the maid moved your pc" ****. lol.

like maids override windows login passwords just like that...

btw, just by checking random news, a rape is gonna cost you like ~6-12month and 10k euros. that is how easily you'll get. ofcourse it should be tougher punishment but that is just how it is.

so, just to make clear, by law and recent sentences this kind of trojan to steal **** load of money would be pretty much 30x worse crime than a rape. so its pretty darn serious.

at least by finland's laws lol. it's easily 10-25 years unconditional imprisonment if you for example hack somebodys online bank system and steal 1M.

in general, the economic crimes are the most serious of all if we look at the punishments with all different type of crimes.

+1

Really appreciate Jens taking the time to deal with this and not just trying to shrug it off and be a bit more prepared next time. Don't get all the negativity in this thread that some people seem to have towards the situation.

Obviously it's bad what happened and you have my sympathy Jeans and good luck on getting to the bottom of it. So many people are blowing this out of proportion really. GET THE FBI! INTERPOL! A TOP LAWYER!

What you have is a laptop that went missing for a few minutes. There's no evidence of any trojans yet. The victims also don't reside in Spain. I'm sorry the police aren't going to waste much time with this.

Also those calling out stars? I mean sure they can put some weight on the hotel, consider other venues in the future etc. But really this is down to hotel security.

Surely there are other ways to do that than to use bolt cutters and welding.

But seriously man, please gtfo of this thread.

Really, "zero" ? You have never heard of a room blocked off prior to checking in ?

Maybe they just don't block rooms off at Motel 6 ?

As I posted in the last thread, similar occurrences to the op story happened to us while we were staying at arts. We would have random excessive calls to the room, sometimes with no response on the other end, and multiple occasions where our keys didn't work. We didnt think too much of it at the time until this thread came out and then everything in hindsight seemed very strange. We decided to be cautious and buy new comptuters even tho we figured the chance that this happened to us was still fairly low. When we got home my friend turned on his computer and noticed there was no pw requirement when previously there was. He restarted the computer and was asked if he wanted to start windows normally or repair mode. When he tried to start it normally, a quick blue screen would pop up and the computer would restart. He currently cant access windows on his computer, so we are pretty confident that the perpetrator was able to do something to his computer as well. I didnt notice anything different on my computer, but still obviously going to err on the side of caution and not use it for anything poker related. Pretty unreal situation overall, I'm glad atleast jens and human were able to catch it before something really bad happened.

Won't repeat what many have said before, just going to state something I noticed on the reviews posted about the Arts Barcelona. In some of them we read storys (of none poker related visitors) complaining about the same room being assigned to 2 guest at the same time, strange visitors entering the room by "mistake" and so on. Looks like this is a recurring problem and maybe an indicator that someone (inside) is taking advantage/creating this situation. More over the first impression I had when read this story is that this is not a "one person" job and it has been in the making since someone noticed the EPT time is like the "high season" for crooks in various areas. Beware that as soon as the people with the knowledge and ethics, that allow them to do this kind of planed attack, realize how much could be stolen in a blink of an eye buy just hacking all this online poker wizards accounts, this kind of situation will be more and more common in other EPT events, unless PS recognizes the problem and provides a contingency plan to protect its costumers.

Most likely a top reg is involved here. Someone playing on the same stakes as these guys. With whatever he put on those computers he can most likely see players cards as they play.

Same happenned to Antonius once

As I said, the basic assumption is: anyone can enter your room at any time.

The details of how to protect yourself depend on your personal situation, obviously. But a hotel room is NOT secure, period. I don't care WHAT hotel it is.

I think this is a solid take on the situation by Rich Ryan from PokerNews (from his 5 thoughts):

Our own Chad Holloway contacted Ignat Liviu, another target of the scam, who confirmed the incident.

“At the security of the hotel we were able to see the guy on tape — a skinny guy at 1.7 or 1.8 meters that I don't recognize,” Liviu told Holloway. “So for sure there is this guy or a group that try to hack the computers of the high-stakes players. I believe this happened to many players, but I was lucky that I came back to the room and see the laptop missing. Anyway, PokerStars security is working with the security of the hotel try to find the guy. I don't know what else can be done."

On Tuesday, Kyllönen posted an update on TwoPlusTwo, in which the parent company (Ritz-Carlton) says that they are “taking all of the necessary measures.”

This story is terrifying.

As Kyllönen says in one of his posts, this is a Ritz-Carlton property, a five-star hotel with cameras everywhere. Something like this should be preventable — unless there is some shady activity going on.

What’s really scary is that whomever targeted Kyllönen and Liviu knows what they’re doing. These are two generally faceless online players, not marquee members of the poker world like Negreanu or Phil Ivey. Kyllönen also believes that some of his Finnish friends were also targeted, and unless they were chosen because of their association with Kyllönen, then they were probably chosen because they have had success playing online poker.

Every high-stakes player that stayed at the Hotel Arts should be concerned, and they should have their laptops scanned immediately. Going forward, as crazy as it sounds, players with a significant percentage of their life roll online should probably have their laptop on them when they leave their hotel room, unless it fits in their safe. There’s nothing wrong with being too careful.

I, like many of you, will continue to stay glued to this thread and look for more updates from Kyllönen. If we are able to get any details in advance here at PokerNews, we will certainly forward them along.

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Have just read about this at russian pokersite, thats really sick. Thank you for the story and all details, pointed out many conclusions for myself.
P.S. It was really a good "detective", was so thrilled to read, hope it hasnt ended and we ll hear something new about it.

I've heard of a block of rooms (some number of random rooms), or an entire floor being reserved, and perhaps some particular room being reserved for sentimental reasons, like "we honeymooned in that room, and this is a second honeymoon", but otherwise I've never heard of a single room number being reserved.

It is obviously a burden on the hotel to reserve a unique room. They cannot give it to someone else the days prior because that guest might want to extend their stay. They must give staff special orders to have that particular room ready at a particular time.

Go ahead and try it. Pick a nice hotel and a date far in the future so there is no conflicts. Don't be surprised if they are suspicious and ask why you need that particular room... people do very weird things in hotel rooms.. but chances are you'll get a flat "no".