It's funny how hotel director replied to almost every bad review on TripAdvisor except last few (they were all published before his last answer to "bad wifi" review)

Inside job, no doubt.

I work on the road as a project manager (175+ nights a year). I have certain hotels I stay at in different cities and at almost every one of them I have a favorite room or two that I reserve ahead of time. It's almost always no problem if I give them at least week's notice which is not "far in the future" at all.

The only real problem is with resort hotels in high season or big weekends.

Oh yeah and these are all "nice" hotels.

that's great, you're a good customer and they treat you special, but it further reduces the chance a random guest can reserve a particular room since you might call..

That's not quite a reply, it's an auto-answer system

When conventions and large meetings are based at a hotel, usually they reserve a 'block' of rooms - sometimes even a few floors. The people who are going and staying there, reserve under a 'lower' group rate.

It is possible that many people got hacked, and not just the top players - although I would assume that most of the players that were there are top players.

Has anyone found any hardware or software alterations yet?

Is it a coincidence thats it HS PLO players that is targeted? Didn't Samer specific play PLO on Pokerstars before? If its Samer & CO behind, could they have access and maybe even operating some of these Swedish or other location highstakes PLO accounts?

Hmm..dont quite understand, but I think this has the potential to be a game changer if legit.

As I understand it, there seems to be a narrowing of possible suspects. Considering this possible game preference anyway. Didnt even think of this angle

but a block is not specific rooms, nor need they be on a particular floor, unless perhaps a business convention wants certain people roomed close together. It's just some number of rooms the hotel will keep in reserve.

Jeans recently posted he plans on getting F-Secure to check his and several friends' computers sometime this week.

My guess is even if the results are negative, they will not change many people's opinions of what happened.

So the trojans are suspected because of the laptop being stolen and then returned, or were there actual trojans found on Jeans' laptop?

Lol. Keep kidding yourself there wasn't attempt to bug the computer. Didn't happen this time because Jeans got lucky BUT how many others WERE bugged? We only know of failed attempts. Succesfull ones by definitions are ones nobody know about. If victim knows he's been bugged attempt by de facto was not a success.

How many players will be playing with their hole cards open against the guys behind this...

Sure would be nice if world was such a nice candy-landy as you believe it to be but here's newsflash: It's not. People are scamming other people all the time.

Trojans are suspected because the computer went missing for 10 minutes before it reappeared.

Someone dug up and posted a similar instance where Shaun Deeb "lost" a laptop for a whole day, but found it the next, sitting behind the shades. My theory is a maid moved it to clean.

In jeans case, perhaps the same thing happened, but this maid returned 10 min later to finish up (ran out of tissue and had to get some more) and then returned the laptop to its original place.
That kills two birds.. the missing laptop and the return. And it doesn't seem too unlikely that this same maid might do a repeat performance on some subsequent day.

I'm not saying this is what happened, and that people can relax. It's just one possible explanation and falls far short of explaining everything..
Everyone should have their computers examined.

Maid moved it twice to location he could not find and then went in and both times returned it to where it originally was(so that's 4 times moving laptop around)? Also bypassing windows password and putting it on restore mode? Why on earth would maid mess with computer as well while cleaning? Nevermind all the OTHER evidence. Oh and wait! There's also VIDEO FOOTAGE of guy entering without permission! Remember the other guy? There's frigging video footage available of unknown guy going in. Next I suppose you are going to claim he's the maid Nevermind hotel didn't even try to claim he was the maid

Riiiiiight.

Well. Have fun living in your cotton-candy world. Don't be surprised when you get scammed though. You just paint yourself as easy target.

Didn't see the other post but wow. Out of curiosity, how does your timeline compare to that of Jens? Same day? Or within a 24-hour period of Jens' account?

This is why, despite the recent posts to the otherwise, I don't think anyone has blown this story out of proportion. As of this moment, we really don't know how big this is.

Also there's been already mentioned similar cases on earlier year EPT's...

And there's more than just laptop going missing(if it was maid doing it maid would have had to go in and move laptop FOUR times just for Jeans(nevermind the other case). Why on earth would maid go in and out 4 times in such a short time frame anyway...) as well.

And seeing the stakes involved I think it's much smarter to lean on being overly paranoid than overly relaxed. As it is if you were in Arts and had not computer secured it's better to assume anybody can see what you are doing on the computer than assume it's safe if you use it for any significant amount of money.

In particular since for most Arts visitors precautions aren't even much of a financial burden. Simple worry about whether you are compromised or not will likely cost you more money...

This is 5* star hotel, probably their maids simply had an request from higher management to perform cookies clean up on quest laptops as well.
Simple misunderstanding guys, they were simply trying to help...

On the serious note it is obvious that hotel security must have had a little more to do with it than it seemed. Why I would say so? Because of the fact were head of security was trying to put the blame on Jens friend.

Rigged. What could have happen as well is that who ever "moved" the laptop originally did a quick "snapshot" of Jens/other victim laptop hard drives. Because they did not have enough time to restore everything back you are getting the error and blue screen.

Cheers from Black Genie. 8 8

Yeah calm your tits guys, it is a 5 star hotel after all, so I think this guy got a point.

And there are must richer people visiting 5 star hotels so why in hell would they target poker players making couple of millions when they could target big online stock traders making hundreds of millions of green.

Would you consider having both laptops inspected by a security company?

Was not the laptop found by the pool or somewhere outside the room at one point? Guess the made felt it would be best to bring it with her, someone might step on it if it was left on the floor behind the curtains.

heh.. well..... it would be awfully nice of the thieves / hackers to leave the computer somewhere in the hotel, instead of just tossing it in a dumpster or the ocean.

Someone removed it from the room, and abandoned it. Not the maid.. and not the hackers? Hacker might not want to chance being caught with it, and might have done so... just dropped it. But why take it a second time?

(edit.. btw, someone itt said they, returning from the pool, found it in an alcove on the 2nd floor and turned it in.)

Just read the whole thread, if this doesn't get resolved it's unacceptable that stars ever gives this hotel its business in the future

Will be interesting to see the results of scans on jeans/human/pistons/etc computers by a reputable security firm - it's definitely worth doing for the information.

Seems likely that people inside the hotel were involved based on the info we have

Also, we should definitely trash the hotels reputation through social media if they don't handle it appropriately because there is clearly either criminal action being taken by hotel employees or at the very least gross negligence

Will be interesting to see how this develops.

I'm just shocked how they are handling this case. I don't think they actually realize how much this will cost to the hotel eventually.

seems way too speculative ... i really don't think, that jeans was THE target, just another victim. when you have a hotel full of poker players, it's not hard to get a few big names

You think a top high stakes reg would take those laptops and leave Ignat's one outside his door and Jeans' one somewhere else in the hotel, then expect them to carry on playing high stakes poker on them as though nothing had happened? Inconceivable.

Even if a reg had stolen them and then been disturbed mid-crime, he would have simply disposed of the laptops rather than return them in a way that both arouses suspicion and leaves evidence.

Far more likely that it is someone at the hotel on a card cloning/identity fraud scam who thought that if the laptops turned up again at some point then the owners wouldn't actually make too much of a fuss about it. Could have been going on for ages like that until eventually it happened to some guests who were very sensitive about their computers being compromised, and only now has it all kicked off.

Joeschmoe: confirmation bias?

From all the information, from the start of the thread where you also immediately reacted to say everything was propably fine, there has been LOADS of information that this was an attempt to trojan. Seriously, you saw the pictures from OP of his laptop, you read that his passwordlock on it disappeared, you readfrom other guesta in the hotel the exact same thing, you read about the phonecalls, you read about the third key, you see the keylogs, you read about the dude which was caught on camera....

And you still think this is a maid who moved the laptop?!

Pretty ridiculous and a bit shady from someone who read the whole thread.