The information that I am posting today is a presentation of facts followed by my concluding opinion. I will try not to make assumptions and inferences furthering my own agenda in the presentation of facts. The post contains three separate parts. Part one is about my experience on pokerstars. Part two is about my experiences with Joshua Tyler. Part three is my own conclusions and inferences on the matter. Part one and part two occur roughly over the same time period, the second part begins before the first part and ends after it.


On March 25th 2013, I arrived in Tokyo Japan. I was on what you could call a business trip, my goal was to play online poker and enjoy some of the local flavor. On March 26th, I was excited to play poker, and immediately hit the streets trying to conjure up any action I could find. I had a match against Ike at 50/100, and was in the midst of a game against gomir at 200/400, when I got a fish from the UK at 5/10. While 5/10 is low for me, Ike was quitting and I only had one game going (albeit 200/400) so I decided to sit in.

This fish at 5/10 went on to turn his $650 into about 3.8k. He was opening 69%, and had a defend of something along the tune of 80%. He was min 3 betting, betting small a lot, overbet leading the flop 45%, and yet absolutely crushing my face in won hands %. I was winning only 45% of hands, despite him opening 69% of buttons.

At this point my opponent said zzz this is boring in the chat. I questioned as to why a player with zero play history at high stakes, whose primary game is $5 sngs would suddenly find his bankroll being on the line to be too boring. Afterall, i cannot remember the last time I had a recreational player tell me that this is too boring. With my attention still being on my higher stakes game, I asked him if he wanted to play 25/50, to which he obliged.

As my 200/400 game broke, I started to focus on the play of the opponent at hand. He started things off with a quick victory.

PokerStars Hand #96201951512: Hold'em No Limit ($25/$50 USD) -
2013/03/26 19:10:50 ET
Table 'Landi VII' 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: WCG|Rider ($5025 in chips)
Seat 2: Forbidden536 ($5439.50 in chips)
WCG|Rider: posts small blind $25
Forbidden536: posts big blind $50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to WCG|Rider [Tc 4c]
WCG|Rider: raises $100 to $150
Forbidden536: calls $100
*** FLOP *** [9h 5s Kc]
Forbidden536: bets $250
WCG|Rider: raises $550 to $800
Forbidden536: calls $550
*** TURN *** [9h 5s Kc] [Qc]
Forbidden536: checks
WCG|Rider: bets $1050
Forbidden536: calls $1050
*** RIVER *** [9h 5s Kc Qc] [Kd]
Forbidden536: checks
WCG|Rider: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Forbidden536: shows [Jc 2h] (a pair of Kings)
WCG|Rider: mucks hand
Forbidden536 collected $3999.50 from pot


I began to get absolutely wrecked. He was leading 45%, min 3b and calling huge 4 bets with 83o, and then also c/r and c/f 28%. In 3 bet pots he raised every spot I didn't have it, and was c/f at an alarming frequency when i had the goods. I was beginning to get worried.

I'd like to take this moment to say I am not a $10 sng grinder or a small stakes tournament player. I am also not a bumhunter in the least, and I play up to some of the highest stakes online. I have never felt like I have been cheated at any point, never complained about how lucky my opponents must be to beat me. I am a hard worker and I believe that skill and intellect overcomes opposition. But at this point for the first time in my career, I began to feel like this was an unbeatable opponent. He then challenged me to 50/100.

We played a hand at 50/100 off the bat, where he again over bet led into me on AA7 and i had QJ. the turn was a king, and despite this being likely a situation where most players would slow down, my opponent again bet the pot or slightly more. The river was a ten, and for the first time in the match my opponent went into the tank, and then came out with a half pot bet that he folded to my shove. Maybe he bet to try to keep the dream alive, who knows. But what I do know is that over 300 hands of hunl my opponent made 1 incorrect call and it was at 5/10, with all hands at higher stakes being played for a raise or a call.

At this point I was just too worried about the integrity of my hole cards, and I sat out. Forbidden then left the tables, and didn’t sit any other reg.

I immediately emailed support, and they told me they were looking into it. I was now worried that with my computer compromised, I would have to be very careful who I played. The fish had won over 35k from me, starting from his $650 buyin. Over the course of that week, I had on two separate occasions had fish from the uk, with virtually no play history, sit me at 25/50. I sat out vs both. To one of their credits, he did sit a couple other players, however then left quickly afterwards. I knew I had to reformat my computer to carry on playing poker. Upon my computer reformat, and no longer having skype or facebook on this computer. These uk fish have stopped sitting me entirely. I wish i remember the second account, all i know is Forbidden536 and flexaccou.

Since that point, zero of these fish sat me. There was another fish that got me for 11k on ftp as well, by making several very liberal hero calls, which happened on the same day as the forbidden incident. I emailed full tilt as well and hoped they would follow up with me. They told me that in that case, no foul play was found.

On April 3rd, I had just finished up an all night session at 100/200. After quitting, I immediately got a call from pokerstars. They told me that they wanted to inform me that they were looking into the matter. They told me that I shouldn't get my hopes up, as no foul play is found in the vast majority of cases. He did however tell me that they were talking as a team and working on the issue.

On April 19th, I got an update

“Hello Doug,

We are writing to you to keep you updated regarding our investigation into your recent play with account 'Forbidden536'.

As you may have noticed, we have frozen this account pending the resolution of our investigation. We are not in a position to officially confirm anything as yet, however, we can inform you that it does appear extremely likely that this player was able to see your hole cards during your recent playing session.

We note that you have reformatted your computer and no longer have skype or facebook on that machine. We believe these to be sensible precautions to take, but please do not hesitate to let us know if you encounter any future instances of suspicious behaviour.

We will contact you again regarding this matter when we have reached a final conclusion. In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Kind Regards,

Jim
Senior Manager, PokerStars Game Integrity Team”

On June 26th, I finally received some good news.

“Hello Doug,

This email is to inform you of a credit made to your account today in connection with your play against 'Forbidden536' on 26th March 2013.

We have determined that 'Forbidden536' violated the Terms of Service for using their PokerStars account during their play with you. We have reviewed the play with both player's hole cards exposed. We are sure beyond any reasonable doubt that 'Forbidden536' was able to see your hole cards whilst they were playing against you.

As we stated to you previously, we closed 'Forbidden536' whilst our investigation was ongoing. We can confirm that it will not be reopened at any time in the future. The funds in 'Forbidden536' at the time of closure was $34,397.10. We have transferred this amount to you this afternoon. We regret that this is not full compensation for the amount you lost ($34,827.40), however, we trust that this matter has now been concluded to your satisfaction.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to let us know.
Kind Regards,
Jim
Senior Manager, PokerStars Game Integrity Team”

Pokerstars also wanted me to note the following should I post quoting their emails


“You are welcome to publish our email to you online if you wish. However, if you do so, could we please ask that you make it clear that your hole cards were *not* compromised as a result of a hole in PokerStars' security. We would like to avoid people misinterpreting the situation if possible!”

This concludes my interactions with stars and I have received a full refund for money that had been cheated from me. The issue that my hole cards were seen had been deemed a computer side error.




On January 27th, my friend Daniel Cates brought his UK friend Joshua Tyler over to my house to introduce him to me. He had told me previously that he was one of his good friends, and that he wanted me to meet him. He said he thought Joshua was a nice guy, and they had gone out together on several occasions. He had apparently played poker in the past, and now had moved onto something that was tech related. He seemed to be a nice guy overall, and we became somewhat friends.

Several weekends later, Josh asked if he could spend the weekend at my house on his trip to Vegas. I have always been welcoming for friends to stay with me, and said sure. I asked him why he was coming for the trip, he said that he had a meeting with someone one night and was planning on seeing friends for the rest of it. During his weekend at my house, I know that at least one night he did not spend the night, and I think he might not have spent either night. Regardless, he was there intermittently. I specifically remember one afternoon, I was about to head out to get lunch and I invited him to join me to get some food. He asked me to pick him something up and he would stay behind at the house. He would come and go, and often had times alone in my house. When we took him to the airport, I asked him about his meeting. He told me that it fell through and never happened.

The rest of my roommates also play online poker for a living. A few days after Joshua left, one of them lost something to the tune of 13 buyins to a 1 tabling fish, playing the same style. He told me that it was as if the guy could see his cards. Another one of my roommates lost 22 buyins over the same stretch to the same opponent, while beating everyone else on the site. Finally on March 9th, a third one of my roommates was beaten for 8k at 3/6 with them playing the exact same way. Lots of leading when they don't have it, etc. This fish played a very unique and recognizable style, and we started calling him “the fish”. We had dinner at a local restaurant following that final session, and we were unsure as a group what was to be done about the situation. Leaving dinner I didn't feel very worried, oftentimes players go on large downswings and being that I hadn't played poker in awhile, I hadn't seen anything suspicious yet myself.

During these losses, we were also undergoing some internet stability issues at my house. At times certain computers would go offline, while other roommates were online. I remember very specifically a point where all of my roommates and myself were disconnected, except one of my roommates who was getting crushed by this same style player that was beating everyone else. We had decided that we can't have unstable internet, and in the middle of march we changed out our router for a new one. To my knowledge we did not have any additional problems with this player at my house following this router change.

Joshua was in contact with me fairly continuously since his first visit. I told him that I was heading to Japan on the 25th, and asked if he could spent another weekend at my place. He said that he wanted to hang out before I left. I said that was fine. We agreed for him to stay at my place on the weekend of March 22-24th, and one of my roommates would pick him up from the airport.

Over the course of the weekend several bizarre situations occurred. The first was we spent very little time hanging out at all. We hung out perhaps one evening, but in general I did not see much of Josh. Although one day, I did see a lot of Josh, when I stepped out of my office into my bedroom, where he had helped himself to showering in my master shower. My house has multiple showers and I was in the area, I was confused why he would shower in the room in front of me. A couple hours later, we were all going to go out. He said that he would catch up later using one of my roommates cars. That night, we didn't meet up.

After I left, one of my roommates saw Josh go into my office. The office is only accessible if you walk through the master bedroom into a balconied hallway that leads to it; the office is the only room in this area. My laptop is stored in my office, and is my exclusive computer used for poker while traveling. I don't understand why Josh would be in my office to begin with, nor what happened while he was there.

That night he hit my roommates car while driving my other roommate's car out of the driveway. He told the other person in the vehicle not to tell my roommates. We are getting somewhat off the topic I understand, but i'm trying to highlight the character of whom I believe to be the perpetrator. At this point I confronted Joshua, and he made up a list of excuses as to why he didn't say anything. In the following weeks he paid the balance for the damage done to the vehicle. At this point I realized that he was a character that did not belong in my life, much less my home, and I decided that this would be his final stay.

Since this point I have done my best to distance myself from Joshua. He has called me once and has messaged me a few times as well to initiate a conversation regarding the issue, I have not responded as I am not sure which direction I wish to take.


The way that the timeline works, all of the issues that I and my roommates had were preluded by a trip from Joshua to my residence. He made his second trip to my house in mid february, and it was in late february/early march that we experienced issues. We changed the router in early/mid march, and he wanted to visit us after this but definitely before my trip to Japan. On his trips, minimal time was spent with me and my friends, and it always included alone time at my house in areas that he should not have been in.

There are a series of other facts that I find to be particularly notable. Joshua is from the UK, and all of the accounts on stars that tried to sit me are from the UK. I also know that Joshua works for some type of tech company, so he has at least a fairly advanced understanding of technology and the way computers work. There are also some rumors of alleged hackings taking place that he is involved in. After the incident I searched around a bit and found the following threads where Joshua is mentioned.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...ayers-1231581/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...again-1205331/

Certainly none of these instances on their own prove that Joshua is a hacker. However, it is my opinion that given the timeline and factual evidence of what did occur, there is enough evidence to make Joshua one of the most likely suspects. In any case, I would advise the poker community to stay away from him. At best he has poor ethics and takes part in suspicious activity, and at worst he has the ability to hack high stakes players for significant amounts of money.


TLDR ;My holecards are compromised, Pokerstars issues me a full refund for lost funds. Prior to this Joshua Tyler was suspiciously around my computer, I believe he may be the hacker.

Been awhile since a scandal hit NVG. Sure seems like he is guilty. It seems strange to me that Stars wouldn't reveal to you the name behind the account that cheated you. I would think that once they conclude a person got cheated they'd be entitled to such information and legal action could be taken. They refused that request? Have you confronted this guy?

Do you suspect Jungleman to be innocent in all of this given that he has a past associated with someone who cheated people? This doesn't mean he is knowingly part of this, but I assume it can't be totally brushed off without consideration.

How confident are you that you were cheated on FTP? Given that they are owned by the same company I would think for a security situation they could share info to see if the FTP incident was from the same IP etc. How are all your roommates playing on Stars from Vegas or is that not the case?

I'm glad to hear Stars did the right thing here and it's good that you were in the financial situation to let this play out for months without it being a life crisis or anything as I'm sure not everyone in such a situation could patiently await the results of their investigation.

It in the sites best interest to protect themselves, what do they gain by allowing me private information that legally I am not entitled to.

Im not going to confront him until i have decided my correct course of action.

I dont think that Jungle acted in this with any malice.

To be honest the full tilt issue has some notable differences. The account isnt from the UK, and also the way that he played was slightly different. He did make a few fairly big calls vs me, and also did stop playing me after i reformatted. But im not at all confident enough to say that it is for sure related.

Thanks, It was hard to be patient but I tried to wait until it seemed like the optimal time to bring this issue to light.

hoping you can edit this still. the lack of pronoun here just makes it a little more confusing and kind of important to the story.

anyway, i don't know the guy but interesting read and i will keep up on this situation, seems like enough circumstantial evidence to need answers.

how much does stars typically release about these types of situations? i assume basically none?

I do think if pressed Stars should be able to communicate with FTP to see if there are account similarities between the two players so it couldn't hurt to press them on that. If it isn't related then so be it, but if you think there is a real chance it is, it seems a sensible idea even if the money would likely be gone by now.

I understand it could be some kind of legal issue for Stars to disclose players names in general, but at the same time, I'd like to think what this guy did is a crime both in the US and in the UK and if there is evidence of such a crime, the authorities should be contacted and I can't imagine how Stars can't legally do this while working with you. They would have to be pretty damn sure this crime was committed to take the action they took so legal action seems the next proper recourse. I am certainly no lawyer so I could be totally wrong here, but it sure seems like it could be legally punishable to me.

As for the above post, while the 'he' should have been added, I'd say it's pretty clear that the implication is that Joshua asked WGC to visit his house before he left for Japan.

It kinda funny, Girah and now this guy are both introduced to people by the great idiot sevant and noone believes he has any thing to do with it. Autism or idiocy Jungleman sure finds him self next to alot of hackers yet never loses,


Just saying!!!!

I was at WCGriders house for a little over a month from early/mid February to mid/late March. During that time, I literally did not lose to a single opponent heads up over a meaningful sample besides the 22 buyins i lost over quite a few sessions of 1 tabling. Without going into too much detail, it was clear that this guy's play style was a losing heavily to me overall, and that it was basically impossible for him to have run up that much with out cheating. After I left his house, I sat and played on that network on almost a daily basis and the "fish" never sat me again to play another session.

I don't know anything about Joshua Tyler besides the fact that he was Jungles friend, and eventually there was some shady stuff in his past uncovered, but due to the overall level of security at the house and the proximity of the time this started to happen, I believe its highly probable that he was the one responsible.

I (for quite a few of reasons) don't think that jungleman is anyway involved besides at one point being a friend of Joshua and bringing him to the house.

Well done by stars.

When I got super-used on FTP and alerted their support they "investigated" and "didn't find anything suspicious" even though the guy admitted he super-used me.

I don't know anything about the situation, but jungleman shouldn't be suspected of any wrongdoing beyond general naïveté.

[Mod edit: removing quoted posts I'm deleting.]

All above aside, this is a ****ty thing to happen and I hope someone this joshua dude has to answer for his crimes.

I'm not an expert computer forensics analyst outside of my schooling but fees called me over the day they discovered this and I looked at some of the computers in the house. I didn't find anything with my limited searching (didn't check all computers) but the router issue is interesting.

I've never heard of home routers being hijacked, but like I said I'm not an expert so it wouldn't surprise me if its done. I imagine it's easier on routers running DD-WRT firmware than just the standard that comes with a common linksys/cisco router that doesn't have ability to accept scripts. I was going to suggest checking log files on the router in question, if it was still available, but I imagine if you're smart enough to infect that you're smart enough to disable logging.

Then again, isn't all poker site traffic in SSL these days? Even being able to "listen" in at the point of the router would be kinda useless, right?

Look whos talking you slandering scumbag. Didnt you tell me that you weren't going to pay the several hundred thousand dollar bet you made to me on the durrrr challenge? Then you had the audacity to say this, and still be a raging douche on the bet we made after I gave you a piece of my action in aria and won you 165k? And THEN you threatened to say bad things to the floor etc to get me out of that same game i made you 165k in because I told you I was taking a way your peice.


Oh and I never actually introduced girah to anybody, nor met him in person

I have actually not once had any kind of problem with josh tyler after numerous interactions with him over 2-3 years. I met him through a variety of people and he seemed to absolutely everybody in Vegas, in addition to helping me in a variety of ways. Only bad aspect i really saw directly from his character was this one night when we took a group of girls home from a club. The girl he was with insisted she wanted to "see her friends," but he kinda didnt let her get the chance/kinda softy forced her up the elevator. I didn't like this behavior, but then again perhaps I am too nice in this area anyway. Andrew Feldman told me he had hacked people and used to collude with him however this was like 8 years ago or something ridic and Andrew Feldman himself has ****ed over almost every friend of his (including myself) and would almost certainly lie/exaggerate about someone he didnt like. I looked into his allegations and could not find any real evidence to support them

Anyways the evidence seems very damning so I guess Josh was a bad person...

in regards to the router, he could of set up a vpn to another network and then remote desktop view the computers that are inside dougs home network.

Assuming he had a vpn setup and administrator access to dougs computer(adding an extra admin login) which could have been gained while he was visiting, he would have full remote access to view the screen and install and update software/trojans/keyloggers

did i read that right? guy who seems somewhat scummy overall visits your place, is in your office for no good reason, you have the impression you get hacked by players from his country = enough to drag his name to the mud in a public forum? looks like you have 0 proof it was him right

just playing devils advocate here, and it's not bad that information about possible/likely cheaters gets out in some way; but imagine being him and not having anything to do with this (which is still a plausible possibility)...

you dont need irrefutable evidence.
reasonable suspicion is more then enough to make a post of this nature.
in fact he states hes making an assumption based on circumstantial evidence and goes on to say while i dont know for certain i think its prudent that i warn the community.

I am so happy stars pulled through this good, a $500 loss is a spit in the lake in this particular scenario. Way to go! Also, lol@viffer. Is it really a shocker that a young person who happens to be very successful at playing cards on the computer happen to get baited by a few slick scam-artists? IFS got baited twice aswell, and numerous other fairly successful ppl have been targeted like this, all happen to play highstakes or atleast sit on a big balance. A typical scam-artist is really good at targeting the right crowd(young,naive, from middle/upper class standing etc), and also very good at friending you up for obvious reasons. If you are just a bit naive you will get owned in one way or another, it's just a question of how much, like a few nights out, rent, or hacked.

you are neither young, as/or successful online or from the same upbringing/status like these, therefor you aren't as naive by default like these guys so it's easy for you to point finger just because you lack trust in people, probably rightly so as it seems to be smarter to mistrust ppl in this field rather than trust, however that is not a stance id like to take myself as it would probably affect my general wellbeing if i have to watch my back at every turn.

If you are going to post a PSA to the community can you at least post the SNs and networks your roommates were cheated by in Vegas?

I'm still a bit shocked that Stars won't provide identity info when they believe so strongly that the person has committed a crime.

+1

if you threatened to take the person behind the account to court/press charges against them i'm pretty sure they would have to reveal the identity. Try contacting the police with proof of emails from stars etc.

edit: stars will have a police liaison officer who is employed to speak directly to the police if and when they are contacted

plz

didnt the guy have previous? fact im fairly certain he'd been linked to a bunch of shady stuff before.

Let me first say that I don't know JM or the other people involved, but I have to agree with Viffer here. OK, with the Girah thing, maybe JM was in the wrong place at the wrong time so he can get a a pass. Though when he is involved in a second instance I think it is naive to completely rule him out or at the very least not question his involvement. Where there is smoke, there is almost always fire and he has had smoke coming off of him twice now.

Also people usually surround themselves and hangout with people who they see as like themselves. Druggies typically hang out with druggies, poker players hang with other poker players, and scammers hang out with other scammers. So if JM, is friends with these type of people what does it say about his character?

PLease tell me what part of my statement is slander? What part isnt true?

I think anyone who has met Jungle will see that it's his naiveness and it's unlikely he's working with Josh.

Edit: anyone besides viffer

That's fair and after rereading JM's response, it seems that maybe this is the case. I know I have been guilty of this in the past but I have found that when you vouch for someone and put your rep on the line for them, you better be damn sure that they are legit. And even though this may be the most likely case, having been involved in a fairly large poker scam myself and having read about a ton of others here, it would be naive to think that it is beyond the realm of possibility. Though I doubt he would be actually working with Josh, cuz why would he, but I would think it would be more of that he helped give Josh the opportunity to help himself.

how are these guys so unbelievably dumb? do they not play poker at all? how can anyone possibly think that making it this obvious that you're hacking will lead to anything other having your account frozen and funds returned? **** makes no sense.