Girah - scammer

Seems like a very fishy coverup instead of a scam, what do you guys think?

His "revelation" about being this prodigy
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...se-poker-prodigy-990495/index123.html

Heres the thread where he gets caught and he posts his apology lol
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...nl-players-30-000-hsnl-xpost-1079435/



Backstory:
- Girah posts sick graphs, gets love, respect and some doubts in 2p2 community
- Jungleman, Sauce123, Dogishead vouches for him
- Inconsistencies, and seeming over-promotion for this guy from said HS guys, sparks doubts then subsequent detective work by 2p2 bustos
- Story gets called out by a couple guys, HS guys defend them in the most obvious and retardedly suspicious manner
- Suspicion grows stronger as it appears it was a fake account in Portugal, for Euro site play by HS guys
- HS guys stop talking about it, tarnishes their reputation a bit
- Suddenly a 30kusd shitty scam story appears, calls out Girah being the culprit, Girah admits to it like 1 minute later
- Jungleman/dogishead/sauce makes posts distancing themselves from him, saying they are cancelling moving in with him in Portugal(lol)
- Most people hate the scam, a lot think theres more to it involving some shitty coverup by Jungle, sauce, dogishead
... thread is about to explode there


Poll: WTF is up with this whole saga?
(Vote): Terrible cover-up by HS life fish
(Vote): Straight up scam by Girah
(Vote): Jungleman/Sauce were also victims of deception

Every step of this story absolutely stinks, not sure if that means girah is fake or what the christ is going on though. I can't help get the feeling that a small lie has been turning into a bigger and bigger one to cover up more and more rough edges. I mean scamming people in a very stupid oversimplistic way for relatively tiny sums just isn't adding up.

Too bad I really liked his video and was hoping to see more

Goodbye Girah.

The question if 'being able to play under multiple accounts at ipoker at Pokerstatic hotseat and conceal his identity brought his some advantages' seems so hilarious right now, as is his answer 'maybe a bit'

so he is both a poker prodigy and a scammer? This all seems very fishy to me. And why would he pay back his victims double. kid is either very weak or its made up.
But no matter how the story twists it seems like he is a scumbag.

o_O

On August 07 2011 04:44 Oly wrote: Every step of this story absolutely stinks, not sure if that means girah is fake or what the christ is going on though. I can't help get the feeling that a small lie has been turning into a bigger and bigger one to cover up more and more rough edges. I mean scamming people in a very stupid oversimplistic way for relatively tiny sums just isn't adding up.

I agree, it seems like it was a level thats just spiraled out of control.

Hes been disqualified from the Lock promotion he was playing in because someone else logged into his account to play from a different location - this was apparently his 'backer'
lol @ being HU prodigy and sponsored lock pro and having a backer
double lol @ letting them log in to play on your account.

No one can be that dumb.

I imagine it would be quite simple to manufacture a "poker legend" with the collusion of a few high stakes pros. Just get a few HSP pros to vouch and chip dump to a random guy and suddenly you have a well respected high stakes player that has won millions. Imagine if you could pay Ivey $5 million under the table and then he comes on FTP to "lose" $5 million to you. You would be an internet legend even though you've won nothing. Ivey could charge a vig and open up a business.

Ive been looking at this for like 20 min and still have no idea wtf is going on...

Hi 2p2, I’m a 6m and HU player on iPoker by the username of “jajay1963”. I met José in a strategy skype group which was set up by TooCuriousso1 to discuss HU strategy amongst good players.

José’s strategy contributions to this group were exceptional, and many top players were very impressed. Early in July, José created a second group which he said was for the best players to further discuss strategy, review each others videos and do some live sweats, to discuss hands just after they had happened. José and everyone elses’ strategy discussion continued to be very good and in early July, somewhere around the 10th, Joséwatched 2p2 poster ImFromSweden whilst he played a session. During this session IFS played sauron1989 HU on iPoker. IFS lost just over $10,000 in 70 hands of $10/$20 but both of them typed into the skype chat group that they thought that this sauron1989 was very bad. About 10 days later, José offered to watch me whilst I played a session on iPoker. Thinking that this was a good opportunity for me to have my play reviewed by a top player, I agreed and he watched my session start out as a 6max session but soon I had sat with sauron1989 on an empty 6max table, after José had told me that this guy was bad and spewy and proceeded to lose a total of $21,900 to sauron1989 over the course of 2 matches at $25/$50. I felt like something was wrong during the matches, not a feeling I can explain, but it just didn’t feel like any other HU match I’ve played and I got suspicious.

After reviewing the skype chat logs, it became fairly clear that José was massively pushing this sauron1989 to anybody who had iPoker funds, saying that he was very bad and that everyone should play him (and let him watch when they did). I voiced my concerns to TooCuriousso1 and we proceeded to work hard to dig up evidence to prove this. Lots of circumstantial evidence was available; José’s chat logs were extremely suspect, where he would push players to play sauron1989 despite not seeming to play him himself. We soon witnessed that whenever José would disconnect from skype, sauron1989 would sign out of the ipoker lobby and would sign back in when José reconnected to skype. This happened 3 times in 20 minutes and all 3 times both José’s skype and sauron logged out and in at the same time. During our attempts to find more evidence, it became clear that José was also operating under the username of dollarman223 on the Merge network. He scammed TooCuriousso1 for $900 and appeared to be setting up another member of the group for a further scam at $50/$100, which we anticipated would be his biggest scam. Once we voiced our concerns to the rest of the group it became apparent that José was setting up quite a few of them for a scam.

Obviously it was naiive and stupid of me and of the others to allow José to watch our screen whilst we played high stakes, but based on a few months of internet friendship and the great strategy José posted, we believed he was entirely trustworthy (despite the scepticism voiced in José’s NVG thread).

To José’s credit, before we had fully conclusive proof, though our suspicions were becoming apparent, he confessed what he had done, and promised to pay us back all of the money plus was adamant that he would pay compensation for the time that we had been forced to put in to unearth the cheating. We have been promised reimbursement for the money stolen by Jose while superusing. Once I receive the funds, I will then send IFS and TC what they are owed.

We have co-ordinated this with José to allow him to write his statement in here for all to read. His statement will be posted below.

edit: regarding the confession, we received a full admission of guilt at a point at which it was more or less apparent that we already knew we had been cheated.







Girah's explanation:


I'm going to be taking a break for a while. There is no right or wrong way to say any of this, so I'm just going to say what happened.


A while ago, I did something stupid. A friend of mine, who I introduced to poker, made a suggestion to me which was, I'm not going to sugar coat it, cheating. I had introduced this friend to poker and he was losing money, badly. He asked to play some of my poker friends and said why don't you sweat them and we'll see their hands. I don't know why I agreed. I don't know why I did it. I guess it was a mixture of guilt and stupidity and feeling ****ty for getting him involved in something which seemed to be bad for him.

This went on for a short while but I felt so bad, I had to say something. I confessed. I told the guys involved what I had done, I told my friends and the people who I respect and who respected me.

I told my Mum, confessed everything to her. I could see the disappointment moving across her face as she told me she was not proud of me despite all my success in poker; she was not proud of her son. She said how she hadn't raised me this way and what had poker done to me. Thats when it hit me, how badly I had let people down. I felt ashamed, I had no explanation; explanations don't cut it in situations like this and often come across as excuses.

There is a quote on the wall in my school which I always see as I pass the nurse's office. It says that the real mistake is not tripping up, but staying down. I thought of that and that's why I'm writing this.

I'm holding my hands up and taking whatever consequences come. I realise the severity of this, but I also realise that I have to take responsibility for my actions and so I'm paying back everyone involved and in addition paying them compensation of $30,000. I've also told my sponsor etc and whatever happens there I will take the consequences too. They have been really amazing to me and I've enjoyed every minute of working with them. Representing Lock and being part of their amazing team, witnessing the incredible growth, was a pleasure and an honor.

I'm young, I made a mistake and I hope that this doesn't define me; I hope that how I deal with this and move forward is the thing that does. And people will say I have no excuse and I know and understand that. I agree. I just want to let everyone know, I'm sorry. I apologise to the guys who lost their money, the people who I love and care about and I have disappointed and the guys in the poker world who have supported me for letting them down. I wish Ish I had something to say to you all, to say to my parents and my friends and all of those who thought I could do no wrong.

Again I'm really sorry.

Whatever the truth is, I always respect the hustle.

On August 07 2011 06:38 blackjacki2 wrote: I imagine it would be quite simple to manufacture a "poker legend" with the collusion of a few high stakes pros. Just get a few HSP pros to vouch and chip dump to a random guy and suddenly you have a well respected high stakes player that has won millions. Imagine if you could pay Ivey $5 million under the table and then he comes on FTP to "lose" $5 million to you. You would be an internet legend even though you've won nothing. Ivey could charge a vig and open up a business.

Well, it depends on people staking their reputation on certain individuals - and its pretty much a lock that anyone willing to pay get some rep. has sinister motives.

This whole thing reflects very poorly on those who vouched for him.

lol that thread is hilarious, more and more people coming in that he scammed

[01:25:17] josé maria macedo: stop thinking so much about your reps
[01:25:20] josé maria macedo: and think about mine
[01:25:22] josé maria macedo: for one second
[16:00:16] josé maria macedo: i assume you all know this
[16:00:24] josé maria macedo: but if it goes public, both mysponsors are dropping me
[16:02:45] XXXXX: yeah they're aware
[16:03:16] josé maria macedo: ah, really?
[16:03:20] josé maria macedo: damn
[16:05:28] josé maria macedo: theyreally know that both sponsors will drop me?
[16:05:35] josé maria macedo: and still want to?


Also, one of his scam accounts on iPoker was 'IfonlYouKnew' xD

tldr!

this whole thing struck me as extremely odd and shady from the beginning. new high stakes player shows up in NVG thread and half of 2p2 oddly seems to hop on his nuts. cates/dog/sauce act like somehow they have inside info that hes awesome. the guy has no reasonable credentials other than the word of sauce/dog, and then suddenly hes a scammer and they all make 1 sentence posts being like omg were not freinds anymore how could he ever do this!

so shady. and sauce/cates/dog keep saying theyve talked poker with him and its obvious he thinks about the game well? either theyre huge idiots on life heaters or they have to know this kid cant lpay at anything approaching their level (or a winning midstake player level for that matter, given the apparent actual truth)

something really doesn't add up here...

so were Jman and Dogishead living with him at the time this happened? If so thats super shady, if not, one can excuse their ignorance imo.

aggravating

He's acting like paying people back + 30k is punishment enough. He should have his entire bank account seized, the funds should be redistributed to everyone he's played against, and he should be going to jail.

This is so fucking weird now that numerous others are saying he scammed them; it's like a spot where no value hands or bluffs make sense. My current theory, which makes as little sense as anything else but just for fun is:

Jose was paid by jungle/sauce/pitf as a shill to allow them to multiaccount and play on euro sites as originally suspected, he then used the reputation he gained to go mad scamming on his own for small sums because he wasn't actually making that much himself.

If anyone lays me 10-1 on this version I'll put a few hundo on it...

Then in October last year, something really messed up happened to me. I was taken advantage of by someone close to me. They cheated me for a large sum of money – about $250,000. Although I don’t want to write too much about the details, it was really screwed up. At first I was just shocked that this could happen - I was 17 and probably a little naive, but I couldn’t imagine that a person could do such a thing to someone they cared about. But as time passed, I started to feel angry. Angry at all of the hard-earned money that I had lost. In my mind I felt abused. I lost faith in people. I started questioning my friends, my family, even my girlfriend and, as I felt worse and worse, my poker results started to flounder. I just felt ****ed over... by life and by poker.

lol this guy is ruthless

What doesn't make sense to me after reading the entire thread this morning is: how did no one notice that he wasn't a "prodigy" after coaching and mentoring him? If he was such a successful player, then randomly doing something like this would be complete madness and pretty far fetched

what the fuck is this shit, I thought the guy was cancelled and fell out of the scene after OBV cheating/shilling his account after it being exposed in that tourny.

Jungleman, who ran the hottest in life ever for the past 1.5 years seems to be going on one crazy downswing as of late, freezing $5million, can't get into canada and now can't stay in portugal + being associated with a huge scammer.

On August 07 2011 10:31 Oly wrote: This is so fucking weird now that numerous others are saying he scammed them; it's like a spot where no value hands or bluffs make sense. My current theory, which makes as little sense as anything else but just for fun is: Jose was paid by jungle/sauce/pitf as a shill to allow them to multiaccount and play on euro sites as originally suspected, he then used the reputation he gained to go mad scamming on his own for small sums because he wasn't actually making that much himself. If anyone lays me 10-1 on this version I'll put a few hundo on it...

i think you're just about 1000% correct here.

i was gonna say it myself but didn't wanna make accusations on jungle/sauce/moloch publicly :/

Oly has a good theory, but how could he coach people/make strategy videos/etc without it getting noticed fast?

+1 for Olys theory. I think they decided to mess around with the HEM stuff and try and troll the community into thinking he was some HU wizard using their reputations as leverage.

I really want to know why Haseeb was involved with him. I think Jungleman is probably relatively innocent, as good as he is at poker hes pretty bad at interacting socially and was probably pretty naive about the whole thing and when he was told to trust this guy he just went with the flow.

Haseebs first post in the thread about it is pretty vague and he pulls the old "too busy" excuse

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=28027437&postcount=584

Seems like Haseeb has something to hide.

On August 07 2011 11:58 Surprise wrote: Oly has a good theory, but how could he coach people/make strategy videos/etc without it getting noticed fast?

if u watch Girah's video carefully, u will notice that, he is reading (what he says in the video) from somewhere

On August 07 2011 11:58 Surprise wrote: Oly has a good theory, but how could he coach people/make strategy videos/etc without it getting noticed fast?

Yeah, it's not like you can very persuasively pretend you are better than you actually are in poker just using words, phrases and small sample sizes.

No wait! You can, and half of poker coaches are doing it......

this is pretty much the worst form of cheating possible. whole story just doesnt make sense. not gonna make any accusations but someone in this thread from across the pond probably hit the nail on the head

http://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-foru...ge_kid_wins_1,6mln_%289bb_100%29.html

Reading this thread in hindsight is hilarious.

On March 03 2011 16:08 byrnesam wrote: There is so much bullshit in the poker world, and so much money to be made from fabricating a story that gets you noticed that i cant believe people arent more skeptical. Put him on the list with TexasLimitKing, PeachyMer and Jason Ho

ALLLLLLLEY OOOOOOOOOOP

On August 07 2011 12:16 ShLiM wrote: Show nested quote + On August 07 2011 11:58 Surprise wrote: Oly has a good theory, but how could he coach people/make strategy videos/etc without it getting noticed fast? if u watch Girah's video carefully, u will notice that, he is reading (what he says in the video) from somewhere

I was wondering about that, and that was one of the first things I thought of when I saw the tittle of this thread. I got flashes of his video up in my head "hmm, maybe something to do with him reading what he was saying in the video"

Hmm!!! Detective work is fun!

+ Show Spoiler +

Didn't haaseeb busto against isildur? It would make his motives clearer if he didn't have much capital to his name.

That would be the sickest story ever if this turns out to be a multi level scam done by busto high stakes players, who created a fake player using their reputation to conceal their attempt to steal money.

Im really looking how it will develop.

recent development:
Seems like at least Dogishead is involved for sure

So this is a very long thread and I am not going to read through all of it. Below is my account of everything that has happened. Girah invites me to a skype strategy group. This was probably a 4-6 weeks after black friday. During this time, I was playing very little poker and was almost non-existent in the group. I didn't participate in much strategy discussions nor any sweat sessions. At some point, I log in and Girah and Toocurious are talking about a fish named dollarman223. TooCurious mentions that this fish plays terribly preflop but seems to 'own' him postflop and that he plays 25-50+. Girah pushes me to play dollarman. TooCurious is horrible at poker, so I decide to play dollarman. We play a short session of 1 table of 25-50 where I end up winning. During this time Girah is messaging me on skype but not viewing my screen. Dollarman leaves only to return in a short while. We begin playing another session during which Girah presses me very hard to allow him to 'sweat' me via teamviwer. Reluctantly, I agree. I want to stress that this is the first and last time I have allowed anyone to 'sweat' me at my regular stakes. I have allowed students to watch me play much lower stakes and ask questions later - but that is where my 'sweating' experience ends. Dollarman and I play another short session, this time with Girah watching via TV. I run numerous suicide bluffs, all of which work and end up winning about 4k overall. Dollarman becomes 'tilted' and asks to play 50-100 deep. I decline. He asks to play at a different time and we exchange e-mails. Over the next 2 weeks, dollarman e-mails me several times asking to play 2 tables of 50-100 deep. Over the same time period, Jose becomes super insistent that I play dollarman and allow him to TV. It becomes almost an obsession for him. He is also insistent that TooCurious play dollarman and allow him to TV and that the European guys in the group who play on ipoker play sauron. This goes on until toocurious messages me and says he believes that Girah is cheating. It is decided that we contact ipoker and merge to try and collect some hard evidence and look for links between Girah and dollarman. One of the guys ends up contacting Sauce and Dogishead. While we waited for responses, one or more of the group members pressed Girah for information. I was not involved in any of the discussions with Girah, as I have had very little contact with him since TooCurious brought up these allegations but I did read through the chat transcripts that were posted. It was clear that Girah knew that he was caught as he had come up with a story that his 'real life frined' super used him. This story was sent to at least 3 people in the group, myself included. Following this he admitted to ToOCurious that dollarman and sauron are the same person and that it is his rich friend from school and that "sometimes" he played at his house. A bunch of other BS followed. The next day(?) Dogishead enters our skype chat and says that Girah confessed to him that this cheating took place. Prior to this, Girah did not confess to me nor anyone else within the group as far as I know. In any case, Dog says he will get back the money of those who lost it. In fact, he gave his word that if Jose didn't pay then he and Jungleman would. He then asks if we are going to go public with this and mentions that it's up to us, but he would rather it didn't go public. He mentions that they were going to go live with him...but if this gets out then they can't do that anymore...implying that if this wasn't outed they would still live together(?). He continues by taking on the role of big brother and almost defending Girah by saying that he's young and stupid and that while what he did was scummy, he doesn't think that he's a bad person and a whole bunch of other comments that rubbed me the wrong way. During these conversations, Dog admitted that both he and Jungleman back Girah for highstakes games. This leads me to believe that either Dog or Jungleman were the mysterious backer who logged in to play PLO during the Lock Challenge. Jose also mentioned that one of the ipoker accounts he uses is in Dog's name. To quote Dog "draw your own conclusions". Dog was very insistent that we hold off on making any posts before he had a chance to deal with this situation as both Jungle and him had "strong ties" to Jose. He also wanted us to wait and "confront" Jose and let him "explain himself" and other completely asinine kindergarten BS. It became apparent (at least to me) that the only thing Dog cared about was his reputation, not about what his "very close" friend did, not about the people who were cheated - only that he's not portrayed in any way that could damage him. He confirmed this yesterday when, upon learning that all of the above would be posted, came into the skype group and said that if this was mentioned, "there is NO way [they] can agree to bank transfer the money". According to Dog, in terms of reimbursement, Jungleman was going to bank wire funds to Moss who would distribute them to those who were cheated. I don't know if this is still the plan or if this has happened yet since I am not owed. It is a complete mess and it is possible that Girah may be repaying the funds via Lock.

"Originally Posted by JnyC View Post
The next day(?) Dogishead enters our skype chat and says that Girah confessed to him that this cheating took place. Prior to this, Girah did not confess to me nor anyone else within the group as far as I know. In any case, Dog says he will get back the money of those who lost it. In fact, he gave his word that if Jose didn't pay then he and Jungleman would. He then asks if we are going to go public with this and mentions that it's up to us, but he would rather it didn't go public. He mentions that they were going to go live with him...but if this gets out then they can't do that anymore...implying that if this wasn't outed they would still live together(?). He continues by taking on the role of big brother and almost defending Girah by saying that he's young and stupid and that while what he did was scummy, he doesn't think that he's a bad person and a whole bunch of other comments that rubbed me the wrong way.

During these conversations, Dog admitted that both he and Jungleman back Girah for highstakes games. This leads me to believe that either Dog or Jungleman were the mysterious backer who logged in to play PLO during the Lock Challenge. Jose also mentioned that one of the ipoker accounts he uses is in Dog's name. To quote Dog "draw your own conclusions".

Dog was very insistent that we hold off on making any posts before he had a chance to deal with this situation as both Jungle and him had "strong ties" to Jose. He also wanted us to wait and "confront" Jose and let him "explain himself" and other completely asinine kindergarten BS.


It became apparent (at least to me) that the only thing Dog cared about was his reputation, not about what his "very close" friend did, not about the people who were cheated - only that he's not portrayed in any way that could damage him. He confirmed this yesterday when, upon learning that all of the above would be posted, came into the skype group and said that if this was mentioned, "there is NO way [they] can agree to bank transfer the money".

According to Dog, in terms of reimbursement, Jungleman was going to bank wire funds to Moss who would distribute them to those who were cheated. I don't know if this is still the plan or if this has happened yet since I am not owed. It is a complete mess and it is possible that Girah may be repaying the funds via Lock.




And once again the "haters" are proven right and common sense prevails. Nice work foxwood fiend on defending these guys and trying once again to throw the scent off the trail.
lm91 is online now Reply With Quote
Old Today, 05:04 PM #952
663366
old hand

Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 1,922

Re: The Portuguese Poker Prodigy José “Girah” Macedo Scammed HSNL players for >$30,000 HSNL xpo
What we do know is this --- Jose shared passwords to his account with Haseeb/dogishead who logged in and played under that account, and Haseeb/DIH shared passwords to his accounts that Jose has used to scam players.

Wow.
663366 is online now Reply With Quote
Old Today, 05:04 PM #953
oakley77
journeyman

Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 363

Re: The Portuguese Poker Prodigy José “Girah” Macedo Scammed HSNL players for >$30,000 HSNL xpo
Quote:
Originally Posted by JnyC View Post
So this is a very long thread and I am not going to read through all of it. Below is my account of everything that has happened.

Girah invites me to a skype strategy group. This was probably a 4-6 weeks after black friday. During this time, I was playing very little poker and was almost non-existent in the group. I didn't participate in much strategy discussions nor any sweat sessions.

At some point, I log in and Girah and Toocurious are talking about a fish named dollarman223. TooCurious mentions that this fish plays terribly preflop but seems to 'own' him postflop and that he plays 25-50+. Girah pushes me to play dollarman. TooCurious is horrible at poker, so I decide to play dollarman. We play a short session of 1 table of 25-50 where I end up winning. During this time Girah is messaging me on skype but not viewing my screen. Dollarman leaves only to return in a short while. We begin playing another session during which Girah presses me very hard to allow him to 'sweat' me via teamviwer. Reluctantly, I agree.

I want to stress that this is the first and last time I have allowed anyone to 'sweat' me at my regular stakes. I have allowed students to watch me play much lower stakes and ask questions later - but that is where my 'sweating' experience ends.


Dollarman and I play another short session, this time with Girah watching via TV. I run numerous suicide bluffs, all of which work and end up winning about 4k overall. Dollarman becomes 'tilted' and asks to play 50-100 deep. I decline. He asks to play at a different time and we exchange e-mails. Over the next 2 weeks, dollarman e-mails me several times asking to play 2 tables of 50-100 deep. Over the same time period, Jose becomes super insistent that I play dollarman and allow him to TV. It becomes almost an obsession for him. He is also insistent that TooCurious play dollarman and allow him to TV and that the European guys in the group who play on ipoker play sauron.

This goes on until toocurious messages me and says he believes that Girah is cheating. It is decided that we contact ipoker and merge to try and collect some hard evidence and look for links between Girah and dollarman. One of the guys ends up contacting Sauce and Dogishead.

While we waited for responses, one or more of the group members pressed Girah for information. I was not involved in any of the discussions with Girah, as I have had very little contact with him since TooCurious brought up these allegations but I did read through the chat transcripts that were posted. It was clear that Girah knew that he was caught as he had come up with a story that his 'real life frined' super used him. This story was sent to at least 3 people in the group, myself included. Following this he admitted to ToOCurious that dollarman and sauron are the same person and that it is his rich friend from school and that "sometimes" he played at his house. A bunch of other BS followed.

The next day(?) Dogishead enters our skype chat and says that Girah confessed to him that this cheating took place. Prior to this, Girah did not confess to me nor anyone else within the group as far as I know. In any case, Dog says he will get back the money of those who lost it. In fact, he gave his word that if Jose didn't pay then he and Jungleman would. He then asks if we are going to go public with this and mentions that it's up to us, but he would rather it didn't go public. He mentions that they were going to go live with him...but if this gets out then they can't do that anymore...implying that if this wasn't outed they would still live together(?). He continues by taking on the role of big brother and almost defending Girah by saying that he's young and stupid and that while what he did was scummy, he doesn't think that he's a bad person and a whole bunch of other comments that rubbed me the wrong way.

During these conversations, Dog admitted that both he and Jungleman back Girah for highstakes games. This leads me to believe that either Dog or Jungleman were the mysterious backer who logged in to play PLO during the Lock Challenge. Jose also mentioned that one of the ipoker accounts he uses is in Dog's name. To quote Dog "draw your own conclusions".

Dog was very insistent that we hold off on making any posts before he had a chance to deal with this situation as both Jungle and him had "strong ties" to Jose. He also wanted us to wait and "confront" Jose and let him "explain himself" and other completely asinine kindergarten BS.


It became apparent (at least to me) that the only thing Dog cared about was his reputation, not about what his "very close" friend did, not about the people who were cheated - only that he's not portrayed in any way that could damage him. He confirmed this yesterday when, upon learning that all of the above would be posted, came into the skype group and said that if this was mentioned, "there is NO way [they] can agree to bank transfer the money".

According to Dog, in terms of reimbursement, Jungleman was going to bank wire funds to Moss who would distribute them to those who were cheated. I don't know if this is still the plan or if this has happened yet since I am not owed. It is a complete mess and it is possible that Girah may be repaying the funds via Lock. "

girah is haseeb's and jungleman's shill imo

The more I try to reason out why anyone in their mind would go to these lengths, it just gets more fucking retarded. It's like celebrities that shop lift.

I can see why jungle/Dog/sauce would make Girah up so they can proxy on EU games, that seems pretty standard
I can see Girah being a loser who just wants to be like his "friends" and make money so resorts to scamming
I know Jungle man said in his Pokerstrategy interview from the other day, there was a surprise that they are all working on
I cannot see any real reason why Dog/Jungle would be a part of the money scamming, they don't need money they can get loans ez if Black Friday fucked them
It makes no sense why Jungle would ever wire money to people who his friend scammed, unless they had some big plan for Girah and they needed his reputation to stay clean so they were willing to go to any means to keep it from the public.

I guess my biggest question is, why do Dog/Jungle want Girah to not go public about this? (too late now) Who cares they proxy HU crushed Euros
Why would they want to protect a scammer and keep it secret? Some thoughts jump to, "well maybe they were scamming/going to scam too" but that is <1%, at least for jungle.

I think the reason why they wanted to keep it secret was they were moving in with him and are desperate to get a location/back into the games and don't want to wait even longer now to find somewhere else and they have some big plans with Pokerstrategy to launch some sort of Training thing.

So I think Jungle wasn't scamming, just trying to move forward with business plans, Girah obv scam and Dog, well that guy has proven to be corrupt but not sure how far he would go.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...odigy-jose-girah-macedo-scam-1079792/

"Short" cliff notes about the information revealed so far.

is there a shadier character in poker than Qureshi? fuck him from now on ill assume he is a scammer unless proven otherwise

On August 07 2011 17:54 Baal wrote: is there a shadier character in poker than Qureshi? fuck him from now on ill assume he is a scammer unless proven otherwise

lol im glad that someone finally said it... i have always thought that this guy came off as super shady and def not trustworthy, but for some reason he receives a lot of respect on 2p2. i know that all the hs players are friends, but when i hear about how much they trust him it REALLY makes me question if the other guys are good ppl or scumbags.

lol I remember dogishead asking me to set up a party account with a euro name for him a couple of years back. This is shady stuff for sure.

Hilarious read.

sakkkkkiiisaaakkkkiii, the legend is back forr mooooooooar

just skimmed this but i hope sauce isn't involved in anything sketchy i always thought he seemed like a good guy.

don't care about haseeb and jungleman

this blows.

uhh i might be misssing some stuff cuz all i read was the OP's of all those threads and such. but unless im mistaken they arent saying hes a bad player? apparently he is a decent player but he just resorted to scamming people. where are these other conclusions coming from? and fwiw if i were hasseb and i had become a friend with such a person and he was my housemate. and started scamming everyone on LP it would be tough to not be directly associated with that behavior. Its shitty situation if its what i think it is because now dogishead could be partially blamed. Just my opinion but i might be wrong about all this. can someone who really read a lot give some more cronologically accurate factual details and better explain peoples roles in this?

On August 07 2011 19:23 DooMeR wrote: uhh i might be misssing some stuff cuz all i read was the OP's of all those threads and such. but unless im mistaken they arent saying hes a bad player? apparently he is a decent player but he just resorted to scamming people. where are these other conclusions coming from? and fwiw if i were hasseb and i had become a friend with such a person and he was my housemate. and started scamming everyone on LP it would be tough to not be directly associated with that behavior. Its shitty situation if its what i think it is because now dogishead could be partially blamed. Just my opinion but i might be wrong about all this. can someone who really read a lot give some more cronologically accurate factual details and better explain peoples roles in this?

they are saying he sucks also. There was graph where he has mediocre NL1000 6m results, and 3- people that sweated him he was just plain bad in a lot of poker aspects and shaky in basic spots where a great player shouldn't be.
His HEM results are apparently 100% faked by adding at least 1 player that's not him through HEM alias function...

On August 07 2011 19:39 LemOn[5thF] wrote: Show nested quote + On August 07 2011 19:23 DooMeR wrote: uhh i might be misssing some stuff cuz all i read was the OP's of all those threads and such. but unless im mistaken they arent saying hes a bad player? apparently he is a decent player but he just resorted to scamming people. where are these other conclusions coming from? and fwiw if i were hasseb and i had become a friend with such a person and he was my housemate. and started scamming everyone on LP it would be tough to not be directly associated with that behavior. Its shitty situation if its what i think it is because now dogishead could be partially blamed. Just my opinion but i might be wrong about all this. can someone who really read a lot give some more cronologically accurate factual details and better explain peoples roles in this? they are saying he sucks also. There was graph where he has mediocre NL1000 6m results, and 3- people that sweated him he was just plain bad in a lot of poker aspects and shaky in basic spots where a great player shouldn't be. His HEM results are apparently 100% faked by adding at least 1 player that's not him through HEM alias function...

o wow...

On August 07 2011 14:23 Mortensen8 wrote: + Show Spoiler + Show nested quote + On August 07 2011 12:10 byrnesam wrote: +1 for Olys theory. I think they decided to mess around with the HEM stuff and try and troll the community into thinking he was some HU wizard using their reputations as leverage. I really want to know why Haseeb was involved with him. I think Jungleman is probably relatively innocent, as good as he is at poker hes pretty bad at interacting socially and was probably pretty naive about the whole thing and when he was told to trust this guy he just went with the flow. Haseebs first post in the thread about it is pretty vague and he pulls the old "too busy" excuse http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=28027437&postcount=584 Seems like Haseeb has something to hide. Didn't haaseeb busto against isildur? It would make his motives clearer if he didn't have much capital to his name.

I had forgotten about this.

He also lost $300k to Ashman in the running propbet

And I liked his video but it was the most scripted poker video I have ever seen, generally the better the player the less he prepares for instructional video, NL200 breakeven regs have powerpoints and sick structure prepared, good regs and people have general outline and sickos like galfond or giggy guy play and say stuff they feel like it would be fun saying, because they know they are very good.

Girah pretty much read it from a script and every detail was pre-determined

iirc this all goes back to January when some of the first information about Girah was discussed. DogIsHead was one of the first people to come out in support of him and since then, other HS players have vouched for Girah's poker skills, etc.

I know this kid and have been talking to him for a while. His name is José, he approached me a while back for coaching (I'm not the aforementioned coach in this thread). He seemed extremely intelligent and hardworking. He told me that he studied poker 3 hours a day every day, just reviewing hands and breaking down his opponents. He said that in a matter of six months from when he started poker, he had gone from a micro stakes bankroll to becoming one of the biggest winners at 5/10-10/20 6-max and was trying to break his way into the 25/50 games. Now, in 2006 or 2005 you heard those kinds of stories often enough... but in 2010, that's an unbelievable progression up the stakes. And as if that weren't amazing enough, on top of all that - he was 17 years old. I've talked to José quite a bit and have given him a lot of advice on various things, but since the very first moment I met this him, I knew he was a prodigy. I remember Sauce saying that he was probably on the road to becoming one of the strongest players in poker. AFAIK, he's approached both Sauce and Jungleman for coaching, and has tremendous knowledge and dedication to the game. Right now on American sites he's pretty unknown, but this kid has just turned 18 and is now positioned to take a serious run at the top of the poker world.

This story obviously made people pay attention, because since then people have been searching for more info about this guy, looking for his actual accounts and trying to find out if his story checks out. Needless to say, a lot of people in the poker community were skeptical.

Recently, it was discovered that multiple people played on his Lock account and won a contest, resulting in him being disqualified. A lot of rumors exist about this guy, but I'm not sure exactly what has been proven yet. Here is a strange post from a self-banned 2p2 mod(not sure if that was his exact title).

What would Ockham's Razor suggest? 1. Girah is Jose Macedo, who moved up to HS games very quickly and has had great success at a young age. When asked why he was DQ from rake race for violating Lock Poker's T&Cs, he explained his backer was caught playing on his account without his knowledge. 2. Girah is indeed a Portugese person, but he is merely a puppet for a cabal of high stakes poker players who made a fake webpage to represent him, devised a fake bio for him, ghost wrote extended posts attributed to him, and coached him how to answer poker-related question in extended live interviews. When he was caught with someone else playing on his account and explained it was his backer who has access to his account as part of their staking agreement, he was clearly lying because he has copies of the hand histories from that session, plus Lock Poker did not come out and explicitly state that he was telling the truth, and have made no public comment on what rules he violated, providing even more evidence that his story is concocted. We don't know what really happened, but since he has refused to really tell us, and insists on sticking to his original story, he is even shadier, because why wouldn't he tell us the truth unless he has something dastardly to hide. Instead, he continues to claim he was telling the truth all along, and instead of proving it, merely offers to put up a few measly $100k to back his side of the story. Furthermore, he is really young and hasn't been playing poker for very long, so there is no way he could actually be playing the stakes he is playing. He is obviously some sort of front for HS poker players. At first, it was believed that only Haseeb Qureshi behind the whole thing, but now it has become apparant that, in addition to Haseeb, Dan “Jungleman12” Cates and Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky are invovled, and all three of them are likely playing on his account, either through a VPN or by ghosting, as these players are unable to get much action playing on their own accounts, and since Black Friday, have been unable to play online at all (though Ben Sulsky may have some ties to Canada). However, it seems this cabal is not limited to the three consipirators names above. Other well-known poker players have come out in support of Girah/Jose Macedo, providing further proof that the conspiracy goes much deeper than we ever believed.

Nolan is a smart guy.

why would a Portuguese be good at poker in the first place , also all the "I have 751 pages of notes on videos and player notes" stuff sounded pretty fishy, not really something a poker genius would do, not to that extent at least

Guys, hey guys.


He already told his mom.


Stop the hating!

this is serious federal prison shit O.O

Now I get it, it's crazy how famous names can give people so much credit, even online (not to mention that they are famous for playing a zero-sum that doesn't benefit society, no offense). I wonder how Kobe would have handled his rape charges if he didn't play like god that season....

On August 07 2011 20:08 lucifer wrote: Guys, hey guys. He already told his mom. Stop the hating!

how can he tell his mom. lol

yeah seems like a little lie gone wild (+1 to oly's theory and that was initially my thoughts about this too)
such a great and interesting story though for the bored like me. yesterday when i was just skimming through 2p2 i came across the new thread about this guy and thought "fuck i better post this breaking news before someone beats me to it" the thread comments there are pure gold and funny as hell

they made a new thread coz the old one was getting so derailed already
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...odigy-jose-girah-macedo-scam-1079792/

again... this blows

On August 07 2011 18:53 bigredhoss wrote: just skimmed this but i hope sauce isn't involved in anything sketchy i always thought he seemed like a good guy. don't care about haseeb and jungleman

Of the 3 sauce is the least guilty (virtually innocent) I think he was caught in the wake.

He said all he did was confirm that Girah was a real person and that theyd talked on skype - this was back when people thought it was a joke/level.

It was Jungle and DIH that really promoted this guy and spouted all the stuff about him being amazing / beast / prodigy, that he had been taken under JMs wing and was being trained and built his reputation up to the point where he was getting Lock sponsorship and a waiting list for people wanting coaching for $absurd/hr.

Of the 3, up to the point i had read last night Sauce was the only one who had actually defended himself and made an effort to dispell any of the misconceptions about him being involved. Jungleman/Haseeb were both 'too busy' which doesnt seem to fit the agenda of 2 HS pros having their reputations dragged to hell.

wow.. one big level gone bad.

edit: now i get it. read the cliffs. what a scam.

You're late to the party whamm!

On August 07 2011 17:48 LMS wrote: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...odigy-jose-girah-macedo-scam-1079792/ "Short" cliff notes about the information revealed so far.

On August 07 2011 21:05 byrnesam wrote: Show nested quote + On August 07 2011 18:53 bigredhoss wrote: just skimmed this but i hope sauce isn't involved in anything sketchy i always thought he seemed like a good guy. don't care about haseeb and jungleman Of the 3 sauce is the least guilty (virtually innocent) I think he was caught in the wake. Of the 3, up to the point i had read last night Sauce was the only one who had actually defended himself and made an effort to dispell any of the misconceptions about him being involved. Jungleman/Haseeb were both 'too busy' which doesnt seem to fit the agenda of 2 HS pros having their reputations dragged to hell.

this.

i feel bad cause i semi jabbed at sauce in the 2p2 thread but as far as general logic is concerned he definitely seems to be behaving in the absolute least guilty manner of the three. he's not saying a lot but answering all inquiries promptly and concisely (which is personally what i think an innocent person would do)

and hes from new hampshire! awesome!

and who plays behind the sauron1989 and dollarman accounts?

If some jailtime potential were put in the mix, we'd prob see the whole 100% truth. Until that happens, I'd still be pretty suspicious of how deep this thing really goes. For now, what's at stake for this kid? Some ban on some forum and live poker events, he's got nothing to lose and it's really possible that he's still being told what to do and say to protect some other guys coz this is all just too weird to be the truth. Basically get this kid in with a cop interrogating him and im sure he'll sing like a bird in no time.

[03:01:50] Matthew Moss: so..
[03:01:53] Matthew Moss: if i dont mention you guys
[03:01:59] Matthew Moss: we get it via bank transfer
[03:02:05] Matthew Moss: if i do mention you guys
[03:02:07] Matthew Moss: we get it via lock
[03:02:08] Matthew Moss: ..?
[03:02:11] DOG: there is NO way we can agree to bank transfer you guys money
[03:02:17] DOG: if you are going to put our names in a public statement about all of this
DOG

On August 07 2011 11:51 nolan wrote: Show nested quote + On August 07 2011 10:31 Oly wrote: This is so fucking weird now that numerous others are saying he scammed them; it's like a spot where no value hands or bluffs make sense. My current theory, which makes as little sense as anything else but just for fun is: Jose was paid by jungle/sauce/pitf as a shill to allow them to multiaccount and play on euro sites as originally suspected, he then used the reputation he gained to go mad scamming on his own for small sums because he wasn't actually making that much himself. If anyone lays me 10-1 on this version I'll put a few hundo on it... i think you're just about 1000% correct here. i was gonna say it myself but didn't wanna make accusations on jungle/sauce/moloch publicly :/

wow... this could be it. don't know what to say. that's poker, i guess.

each one of these released skype conversations make Dog/JM look worse and worse imo. this still does not feel like the end of the rabbit hole though...

On August 07 2011 21:46 LemOn[5thF] wrote: [03:01:50] Matthew Moss: so.. [03:01:53] Matthew Moss: if i dont mention you guys [03:01:59] Matthew Moss: we get it via bank transfer [03:02:05] Matthew Moss: if i do mention you guys [03:02:07] Matthew Moss: we get it via lock [03:02:08] Matthew Moss: ..? [03:02:11] DOG: there is NO way we can agree to bank transfer you guys money [03:02:17] DOG: if you are going to put our names in a public statement about all of this DOG

wat omg

On August 07 2011 20:07 MiPwnYa wrote: why would a Portuguese be good at poker in the first place

lol sooo true.

Originally Posted by sergeisergei So the background basically is that Dog Is Head created this whole Poker Prodigy theme over Jose, who in reality is a mediocore midstakes reg. This Portuguese guy exists obviously and plays some poker, but "girah", the highstakes uber pro, is just creation of atleast DIH and maybe some other guys (tho DIHs storytelling skills are just, lets say, too awesome for this to not be his idea) People would rail/get coaching from Jose(not "girah" and think he is just some regular guy, like he is, making ton of mistakes and being unsure what to do in simple spots. Then in Skype DIH or someone would takeover "girah" role and write all of the highlevel strat conversations. Same goes for the training video he made that was clearly written for him, as even Jose himself was a bit unsure what he was saying. And for 2p2 posts (yes IP's probably track him to Portugal, but have you thought about him copy-pasteing stuff that "someone else" wrote to him) Jose is just the face of "girah", while in the background there's guys who are using his reputation, his accessability to Euro sites, and him being him to a) gain more money b) getting jungleman to play durrr. Everything just fell apart when Jose himself went on and scammed people who thought this was the real "girah". What you should realise is that this Jose guy isn't the same person, the guy who you thought would never scam you just because he's got this high-level poker-mind, because, well, he isn't "girah". He's just the face of it.

This is the scenario I lean to right now, sounds really plausible.

i love the title btw "Girah - scammer"

LOL

yeah it's good mods changed it, i typed an long title and it read "Girah poker..." and my computer froze and left the house went to sleep where i had no internet.

JM looks HORRIBLE here.

does anyone else find it fishy that girah challenged durrrr to a hu challenge? to me that looks like haseeb/jungleman about to do a much much much worse and actually illegal/unethical version of what cts/stinger/townsend did to isildur.

faggots

This is getting juicier by the minute. Danggg

This is horrible press for these dudes. No way to get around this train wreck now

why did JM/sauce get such a random guy from portugal to make them a euro account. Surely they could have known much more trustworthy europeans to do this with. family, real friends or other high stakes european players they've known for a while would have been better. This story just doesn't make sense to me!

JM's statement:

Here is my side of the story: About a week ago kjemmy on 2+2 messaged me saying he thought Jose was scamming him and his friends, with a lengthy explanation... I told Haseeb about it and he said Jose had mentioned something about sauron1989/dollarman as well, to be honest I did not inquire that much because I thought it was basically impossible for Jose to be pulling such a scam. Later in Gibraltar, Haseeb talks with Jose and the victims and actually suspects Jose is scamming based on how he is responding, and gets a confession out of him. Incoming ****storm... Haseeb and I know a bunch of crazy **** is about to go down on 2+2 and, given our public relationship withJose, want to basically stay out of Jose's crucifixion (well so much for that). Hence the chat logs trying to convince the victimsnot to talk about us... As for the payment we owed Jose money and would rather pay the victims than give Jose the money because it seems more fair. Once again, Haseeb and I have nothing to do with Jose's dumbass actions. On another note, I didn't like the way Jose seemed to like to build hype for himself: challenging durrrr in the durrrr challenge, taking the isildur challenge, offering to play anyone giving 1bb back at 200/400--basically suggesting he's better than he was in ways that he could not back up. I've always been a proponent of the idea that respect should follow from being worthy of respect, not vice versa--something that Jose's actions contradicted. Lastly it's a bit exaggerated to say he was my protege, indeed I did coach him but for maybe a couple of sessions at best in addition to answering questions. Many others are my protege moreso according to the time I've given them. For his actions, Jose should burn on his own. I am not involved in this ****storm. Also, Haseeb will be commenting shortly/writing a blog post shortly to explain everything.

On August 07 2011 23:51 Daut wrote: JM looks HORRIBLE here. does anyone else find it fishy that girah challenged durrrr to a hu challenge? to me that looks like haseeb/jungleman about to do a much much much worse and actually illegal/unethical version of what cts/stinger/townsend did to isildur.

wow. it looks like that's what they were planning on doing.. :/ hate scumbag scammers

On August 08 2011 00:59 k4ir0s wrote: Show nested quote + On August 07 2011 23:51 Daut wrote: JM looks HORRIBLE here. does anyone else find it fishy that girah challenged durrrr to a hu challenge? to me that looks like haseeb/jungleman about to do a much much much worse and actually illegal/unethical version of what cts/stinger/townsend did to isildur. wow. it looks like that's what they were planning on doing.. :/ hate scumbag scammers

so maybe jungleman playing durrrr challenge is actually jungleman/dogishead/sauce1234 vs durrrr?

my favorite quote

05/08/2011 17:43:08] josé maria macedo: man matthew, dont make this weigh into your decision and im not trying to threaten or anything like that because its obv not like that. but honestly, i would actually rather die than it go public

@brianchastings Read the Macedo stuff, have a bunch to add later. Will address in full later on 2p2/blog. So disgusting tho, wakeup call as to trusting ppl

On August 08 2011 02:47 byrnesam wrote: Show nested quote + @brianchastings Read the Macedo stuff, have a bunch to add later. Will address in full later on 2p2/blog. So disgusting tho, wakeup call as to trusting ppl

Dogishead explanation in his CR blog

http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/internetpokers

Needless to say, this has been a pretty fucking absurd week. TwoPlusTwo has exploded since the scam involving Girah has gone public. Jungle and I have just arrived in a friend's flat in London and have finally managed to grab hold of internet (our phones don't get data outside of the US) and read over the shit in the thread. We've been without sleep and have barely put our shit down before looking over the thread and seeing how it's exploded. Of course, given things have evolved the way they have (and against the advice of my friends), I'm going to write as much as I can explaining the entire story about Girah and my relationship with him before I go to bed. I'm going to start from the very beginning - so read closely NVG. This is all the fodder you're going to get. This is going to be long as hell and as thorough as can be, and I'm probably not going to try to edit this for continuity or fluidity, so brace yourself and enjoy the drama.


How I met Jose


Jose came to me a long time ago, sometime last year when I was taking a break from poker after getting hacked in January. He had seen my videos and read my forum posts and told me he was a big fan of mine and wanted coaching. At the time I wasn't coaching any poker and was just going to school and had distanced myself from the poker world, so I told him he should contact Jungleman if he wanted some NL coaching. He told me his story about his meteoric rise in poker - about going from nothing to several hundred thousand dollars in only 6 months (or something like that, I don't remember the exact details). I remember talking to Sauce and a few other people, saying that I couldn't believe in this day and age that somebody could do that - back in 2006 it would've been exceptional, but in 2010 it was downright amazing.

Jose talked to me a lot after that, though we didn't talk much poker. He mostly spoke to me about his life and about more general things relating to poker. I taught him the importance of having a good poker network to learn from and talk strategy with - I told him that was an important part of growing as a player, since when I met him the only players he was discussing poker with were worse than him. He would complain to me about 10 buyin downswings - I told him those were nothing, and as he moved up he would start facing some real and difficult downswings that would challenge his confidence. He revealed to me that he'd never had more than 15bi downswing in his entire career, which blew me away. I told him once he stops running so hot, he was in for a shock. I heard about these shocks when his shots at 200/400 went poorly. He often asked me for advice about issues in his real life, about his personal relationship with money and with poker, about ego and aspirations as they related to his poker game. He seemed like a burgeoning young poker player, and nobody I know who spoke to him regularly (quite a few people at the time) thought otherwise. Everybody was amazed by this kid. He would sometimes send me hands as well and I'd comment on them as best I could, but my 6-max NL game is pretty rusty, as I play almost exclusively heads up. But I could tell he was a very sharp and fastidious thinker.

I was honestly inspired by his work ethic, his drive, and his studiousness. I have no problem saying that even now. I took a strong liking to the kid. And when he told me about how he his uncle offered to help him invest money into a house (since he was 17 at the time and couldn't do much with the money he had made), I advised him to be very careful who he trusted outside of his immediate family. He said he trusted his uncle like a father. And a couple of months later, I talked him through his feelings when he learned that his uncle had taken the 300k (or whatever it was) and skipped town.
Jose is real. His story is real. He really did make a fuckton of money, he came to all of these high stakes players before any of this shit happened, and it's really clear that he ran exceptionally hot to make so much money in such a short amount of time, but also that he is a very good poker player etc. etc. He is not the best, and I'm sure that his skill was built up by all of the hype to be larger than it actually was, but he is undoubtedly a very good poker player. Any and all conspiracy theories of Jose being completely invented as a puppet account are not only utterly false, but completely fucking ridiculous on many levels.

Anyway, that leads me to the next part of my involvement with Jose.



Jose's breakthrough


When the thread came out on 2p2 about some guy looking for a Portuguese Poker Prodigy kid, etc. etc., my initial thought was that he was referring to Jose. When I read all of the thread, although some of the details seemed a little off, I couldn't imagine that there were two people with the exact same story. And soon enough, I had Jose blowing up my my Skype saying that he had become famous, that somebody had made a thread about him, etc.

I told him that this was an amazing turn of events for him - the way this guy was building hype about searching for this young Portuguese prodigy, I told him that if you play your cards right, you can launch a pretty amazing career out of this, especially since the European market is growing and has a shortage of poker pros, he was positioned perfectly for a big break. He didn't have much know-how when it came to the poker world, so I told him to get an agent, reference the thread looking for him, and try to build his career using that as a launching pad. I remember him being extremely excited. I think the idea of becoming famous in some way was probably more valuable to him than the money he had already won.

This is where I start to get more deeply involved with Jose. When Jose contacted the big poker agencies, I told him to grill his prospective agents as hard as he could on what exactly they would be able to offer him and what strategy they would take in building his career. But in the end after talking to a number of big poker agents, he came to me and told me that he wanted me to be his agent instead, because he told me that I had a sharper mind and a better grasp on the poker world than the other people he spoke to. I was very flattered by the offer, but at first I told him I couldn't agree to that - I had my own career and responsibilities to worry about, but I told him I'd have no problem offering him advice from the sidelines. But after reconsidering it and talking it over with some friends, I decided to accept on the caveat that I would only help him out on the online end of his career. I told him, I can't really be your agent - I don't think I have the credentials, connections, experience, or time to commit to something like that. I can't in good faith say that it's a good idea for you to take me on in that capacity. But as I've never done something like this, I like you and want to help you, and I think I'll learn a lot from working with you - I told him I'd be willing to help you get your foot in the door and advise you through the start of your career.

We were intending to work out payment, but we never really agreed on anything specific. At times it was suggested that I'd receive a cut of his coaching winnings as he always told me he was very excited about becoming a poker coach. But again, we never agreed on anything exact, just randomly he'd let me know that he'd give me 1k for doing this or 2k for doing that (usually helping him write stuff). I've not received any money from him as of yet. I was never worried about it.


Working with Jose


Anyway, I told Jose the first thing to do was to come out and tell his story for all to see. I knew it'd be amazing enough that he would be able to make a lot happen, but I never imagined it would blow up as a big as it did. I was amazed when it even got 30,000 views, much less 300,000.

Jose had always told me that he was a big fan of my writing. He used to say that my writing reminded him of F. Scott Fitzgerald (which I thought was ridiculous) and say that he had always wanted me to write about him as well. He saw this as a chance to indulge I think. He was always something of a narcissist - but at 18, that's not surprising. Most poker players are. He asked me to write his story for him, he said he wanted it to be a sweeping and amazing tale about a young man creating his own legacy, blah blah blah. I told him, haha, no. I'm not going to write your damn story for you. He pleaded and pleaded, and finally I said, alright, you write your story, give me all of the details you want to include, and I'll spruce it up and make it nice and fluid.

He sent me his rough copy of his OP, which was okay but could be rearranged and improved quite a bit. I worked with him over a few days (he was a very meticulous complainer about the little things he didn't like or thought weren't quite perfect) and interviewed him for more content until I thought the story was nicely fleshed out, and then I sent him the final version of my draft. I told him - once you create this story, you're going to become known as the new big poker player on the block, so you'll need to have one online monicker for people to know you by. What screenname do you want to use? He said that he didn't want to use any of his screennames, as his lawyer instructed him to keep his underage screennames out of the public light. I asked him, then what do you want to go by? Jose? Macedo?

He thought about it for some time. After a couple of days, he told me he wanted to be known as Girah. I asked him what it was, but he wouldn't tell me, just that it was an inside joke. A couple weeks later I remember he ended up telling me - Girah was something that he and his teammates would say in the locker room. I can't remember what the hell it was about, only that it was really gay sounding and that he was embarrassed to admit it because he knew I'd make fun of him for it (and of course I did). Btw, as to those people who say that I know that "girah" is some ancient Indian word for some obscure unit of measurement - get a grip. I'm Pakistani, not Indian, and I can barely speak conversational Urdu.

Anyway, the story breaks and I advise Jose throughout all of it. How to deal with the media, what to tell people, how to carry himself, to ignore the NVGtards and the haters and to just keep doing his own thing and respecting his own success. Jungle, Sauce and I all ended up posting in the thread vouching for him, or more specifically, congratulating him on his success, as we all really wanted to see him succeed and build a career and name for himself. We all had a ton of faith in the kid. It made me really happy to see him getting so much success.

Of course a common question among all of this has been on the veracity of his results. His results were not fake. They were all real, and I made sure of that when I agreed to write his post and include with it the stats he showed. He told me that he could prove that he had 1+ million in winnings but spread over many different computers and accounts. I told him that if he had that, then not to write the blog post until he could include with it an HEM screenshot of all of his winnings, otherwise no one would believe him. I told him how to export databases, how to upload screenshots, etc. I certainly wouldn't have allowed him to publish something like that if it weren't true. I believed it then and I believe it now.

So, I did a lot of odds and ends in helping the kid's career move forward. I set him up a website domain and helped him find a web designer to create his website, I edited his blog posts and always encouraged him to tweet, blog, post on 2p2 etc. regularly to keep his fans happy. I never wrote anything from scratch for him although he often asked me to, but I told him if it doesn't come from your voice it's going to sound fake or contrived. But almost everything that he wrote he asked me to tidy up or for advice on things to add or subtract. I was more actively taking on a role as a big brother / mentor, giving him advice in his life, in career, and in poker.


Backing Jose


Around the same time as all of this was happening, he was running really bad in poker. After getting scammed by his uncle, he panicked and cashed out a lot of money to purchase a big house and didn't keep much money online. He started to ask around with some high stakes people he really respected if they'd be willing to stake and coach him. This is actually not uncommon - I've seen a lot of really good players do this for a while when they downswing and lose confidence, and then quit the stake once they are feeling better about themselves or about poker. I thought it was a really good opportunity, as I knew Jose was crushing 6-max with a huge winrate, and figured he was only going to improve his game more and more. I asked several people if they'd be interested in staking him, and eventually Jungle and I decided to go ahead and stake him. He asked that the stake be kept private, and we agreed and intended to keep it that way. This is obviously a very common request and we intended to honor it.

Now, I've been trying my best to ignore some of the conspiracy theories on 2p2, but it seems I have to respond to this one because it's been so prevalent. People seem to think that either Jungle or I were using Jose's account to play poker on. The answer is emphatically, no we didn't.

1) Neither he nor I are 6-max players, we both play heads up, whereas Jose plays primarily 6-max
2) Majority of Jose's play on our stake was at 5/10
3) There were obviously TONS of times that both he, I, and Jungle were playing online poker simultaneously
4) Numerous people, including EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO GOT SCAMMED will testify that Jose is a real person, really plays poker, is good enough to beat the stakes he plays, etc.

That being said, over the next few months Jose began issuing more and more big challenges. He wanted to play the Isildur challenge, the Durrrr challenge, and so on. I told him that he could play them if he wanted to, but we certainly wouldn't be taking his action on those. But I remember telling him - asking to play the Durrrr challenge is whatever, because there's no way Durrrr will play you anyway until he wraps up his other challenges. But if you're going to ask to play the Isildur challenge, it may be worth the -EV for you, just because of how much hype it will build for you. I told him if he could scrounge up the cash, it'd be worth it in career EV. But none of us thought that Jose had an edge on Isildur. And for those of you who think that we were going to somehow conspire with Jose on that count - Jose offered in his Isildur thread (look it up) that when he played the Isildur challenge, to do so ON WEBCAM. So there'd obviously be no way he could cheat once he made that offer. A lot of idiots are suggesting this, so I wanted to put that to rest.


Jose's disqualification and my iPoker account


I got Jose disqualified from the Bluff Challenge. I was bored after Black Friday and hadn't played any poker in a while. I didn't have a Merge account and couldn't play any poker at all, so I asked Jose to let me onto his Lock account (I didn't have one myself) to play some PLO and assured him that I was taking all of the losses for myself. He said this was fine, and sometime when he was sleeping I played some 25/50 and lost some several buyins pretty quickly. I didn't at the time perceive it as a big deal, since I figured if I took the time and went through the process of making a new account on Lock myself, probably even more people would've been willing to play me at PLO than would be willing to play Jose's account. In fact, I didn't really know anything about the Bluff Challenge that was going on at the time. I lost several buyins pretty quickly on some flips and then quit.

Obviously, it was very wrong of me to do that, on several levels. It's one of those things that happens and that everybody does and has been guilty of at one time or another, but yes, I acknowledge that it was wrong. But when Jose got disqualified from the Bluff Challenge, it exploded on a whole other level. I felt really ashamed of doing this and possibly fucking up Jose's career, and in the proceeding few days I did what I could to help him deal with the public response and the explosion of outrage. I think he felt very indebted to me despite the fact that I had screwed things up for him, and told me that he would do what he could to protect me because he didn't think I really had done anything wrong. I felt his compassion towards me and it made me feel very comfortable with him.

Regarding the Toshisan account in Canada - this is indeed my account. I set this up a while ago using a P.O.Box in Canada, but had stopped playing on it for a long time. It was mostly sitting inactive. When Jose asked me to help him get an iPoker account funded because Lock was having liquidity/cashout issues (where he had almost all of his online money at the time), I told him I'd try to get somebody to get funds onto my old Toshisan account and he could use that until he could cashout and get money onto iPoker for himself (among other sites; I always told him, being a European, he should be playing as many sites as he possibly can for game selection). As a staker/stakee relationship, yes, it's somewhat shady, but again not uncommon. Toshisan was not an account with any profile or reputation, so I figured it was fine for him to use it under our stake.

As far as us living together, me, Jungle, and Jose had always been planning to live together for some time. He was originally supposed to come hang out with us while we were in Vegas since we both wanted to meet him in person, but those plans ended up falling through since he was busy with his final exams. So when we decided we were going to move to Portugal, I thought since Jose was a local, it would be really good for us on many levels. First, he knew Lisbon well and knew lots of people there and of course could help us get set up, settled in, and knew the language. Second, I thought Jose would grow up a lot if he left his mother and was living out on his own, and of course he would learn a lot from both of us in terms of his poker game. Third, I figured it'd be really good for Jungle to have somebody to mentor who looked up to him as Jose did. And I thought that Jose's rigor and raw studiousness would be good for me to help keep my nose to the grindstone and spend more time studying and working on my poker game. It seemed like a perfect fit, and I always imagined it would be a lot of fun. (The whole Canada/Brazil/Portugal thing if you follow my blog you'll know all the details)


How the Scam Unfolded


Well, I guess technically the first I heard of this scam was when Jungle told me in passing that he heard from someone (KJemmy) that Jose might be scamming people. I totally ignored it, because it sounded ridiculous, and 2p2 and whatnot were so rampant with conspiracy theories and utter stupidity that I thought it was just an offshoot of that crap. And the second time that I unwittingly brushed against it was when Jose messaged me on Skype, telling me that there was this fish at 50/100 who had a huge VPIP and 3-bet but played decent postflop, asking if we wanted his action against him. I said yeah sure, of course we do. And a couple days later, he tells us that he lost a couple buyins to this fish at 25/50. I say it's fine, don't worry about it, just no more 25/50 for a while - I tell him just grind some more 5/10 and try to run good for once.

But my end of the story really begins 4 days ago, the night before I left on my flight for London. I was procrastinating on packing all of my stuff and planning to stay awake all night for my flight that was departing at 10AM, so I'd be able to sleep through my 10 hour flight. I had spent some time dealing with the goodbyes with my family (my mother bawls her eyes out every time I tell her I'm going away for a while). I remember very clearly as I was heading back upstairs, I got an e-mail on my phone which read as follows:

Subj: im quitting poker and giving my money away to charity


just wrote the statement, im quitting poker, i hate the fame. i helped my degen rich best friend get setup on sites and i sweated ppl while he played them and he lost against some won vs others, broke about even net but everyone thinks i was superusing them. i played him myself cuz hes such a degen and lost but no one believes me. everyone thinks im some kinda fucking scammer, i dont know what to do but i know i dont want to be involved in poker anymore or ever again


I read this, and my only reaction was "lolwtf". So I went upstairs and called him on Skype to see what the fuck this was all about. This wasn't the first time that Jose had sort of flipped out like this about quitting poker. Actually, Jose was in makeup to Jungle and I by quite a bit - over 50k iirc. He always showed us his EV graphs which showed him running way under EV, and every time we cleared him to take higher stakes shots they seemed to go poorly. So I remember another time previously while I was in San Francisco, I randomly got a message from him saying he was quitting poker because he hates it and he runs so bad, and that time too I had to talk him down and reassure him that it was ok, he was still good, and that we were still happy to stake him and that we weren't worried about it. It always seemed to bother him tremendously to be in makeup to us.

Well, anyway, back to the story. So I call him up on Skype and say "Ok Jose, this better be good because I'm in the process of packing up my entire life and I have to drive to the airport in 5-6 hours and the A/C is broken and I'm exhausted. Tell me what's going on." Strangely, he refuses to speak to me. We talk on Skype all the time, but when I tell him to call me on Skype, he says no, just chat. I finally say, "ok, dude, just let me call you and I'll talk via Skype and you type to me ok? You don't have to say anything." He lets a call through and I ask him what's going on.

He tells me the story about his friend who's some rich fish who he's been helping out and blah blah blah, people think it's him and his friend has actually scammed HIM too, etc. etc. Basically the same story he told other people. To me all of this sounds pretty bizarre as you can imagine, but I have 100% trust in Jose, so I know it has to be some really weird misunderstanding. Jose is still typing and is getting pretty anxious, typing stuff like "if they think I scammed them then I'm going to lose my career, I would rather quit poker than let that happen." I finally get annoyed with him typing and tell him to knock it off and speak back to me, which he finally does. He is very quiet and reserved - I can tell he's very jostled. I ask him on the details of who's accusing him and what their evidence is, but he doesn't tell me much specifically. I tell him okay, if you didn't do anything wrong then this can be cleared up no problem, you just need to calm the fuck down and rest assured that everything is going to be alright.

I tell him to invite me into a group chat with whoever's accusing him so I can get their side of the situation. He invites me into a conversation with Nick (I don't know his 2p2 name, but he's the first guy who basically confronted Jose and who Jose sort of slipped up with). Nick, Jose and I all get on a call together and start talking. I, as calmly and objectively as I can be, ask for Nick's side of the story, what the evidence is against Jose, so on and so forth. I point out that Jose has no incentive whatever to scam people for such a small amount of money, that he has too much to lose, that he's too smart to do something like that for such a small amount of money, especially in such an obvious way, etc. Nick agrees completely. But then he starts telling me all sorts of shit - Jose trying to get people to play against Dollarman and Sauron, the simultaneous timeouts, the uncannily perfect play in some hands, etc. I am pretty surprised by how solid it is, so I ask him to show me all of the suspicious hands that he has against Dollarman or Sauron. He shows us a few where Dollarman checks back KQ vs AK on KJxx9 (in a spot where QT was extremely unlikely) and a spot where Dollarman folds to a river shove on KJ9Q9 where Dollarman pots river, hero (spew)shoves ace high and Dollarman folds in a spot where Dollarman seemingly would've had to have total air that floated the flop to play that way. I point out that 88, QJ or AJ are also plausible hands to play that way and say although some of these hands look fishy, they're definitely inconclusive.

Jose assures us that this is all his friend's doing and his friend can get hand histories from Lock that show everything, and that he'll even fly his friend out to go visit his accusers to prove he's real, and so on and so forth. He demonstrates the utmost confidence that he will exonerate himself. But the point at which I start to become unsure is while I am speaking to Nick and basically telling him that once we get Jose to send us the hands (I say they have to be forwarded from Lock support to ensure there's no tampering), we will be able to see very clearly whether or not there was any foul play. It will be clear as day with the full hand histories.

Around this time, Jose is very quiet, and interjects sheepishly... "you guys are going to post this on 2p2 to punish me right? That's the reason for putting it on 2p2 isn't it?" Nick replies "Well... I don't know Jose... we don't know if we're going to do it yet..." "Well then why won't you just let me quit? If I just quit poker and promise to never play again, then that's enough punishment isn't it? Why do you want to punish me more?" Nick is dumbfounded and doesn't know how to reply. I tell him "Well, we're not even at that stage yet. First we need to look at the hand histories and see what's going on." But at this point, I have a really bad feeling in my gut. Ironically, by the end of the conversation Nick seems to have largely turned around and doesn't think that Jose could possibly have had any incentive to do this or cheat anyone. He seems to now believe that Jose will be exonerated and that things will turn out okay - "we won't post anything on 2p2 unless we're absolutely 100% sure about everything", he assures Jose. As we hang up the call, my casual confidence was replaced with a sinking feeling that Jose was guilty.


I called him immediately afterwards, and was very careful with my words at first. He kept asking me if they would let him just quit poker instead, why not, why not, he'd say. And after a minute of this, I asked him point-blank, "Jose, did you cheat?" "No," he said emphatically. "Because if you did, you need to tell me now. All of this will be a whole lot better for you if you tell me now than if you try to hide this." "What, do you think I cheated? Do you not believe me?" "Well Jose, the evidence that he gave was pretty fucking strong. And I could tell by your voice and the way you were talking that something was wrong. I know you Jose. Tell me the truth. You did it, didn't you."

He was silent.

"Are you going to tell me?" I said.

"Yes."

"Yes what?" I said. "Yes you're going to tell me or yes you did it?"

"Yes, I did it."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

What went on after that was a long and arduous interrogation where I tried to get all of the facts out of him. I wanted to know all of the truth of what went on and exactly what he did, and I kept telling him that he needed to tell me absolutely EVERYTHING. I remember asking him.

"Why did you do it Jose?"

He paused, and said "I don't know."

"What the fuck do you mean you don't know?"

"I don't know..." He sounded very scared.

I searched my understanding of this kid, who he was and how I knew him, and tried to imagine what could make him do something so stupid and despicable as scamming his friends and lying about it. I asked him "was it just that you were tired of losing? That you wanted to finally win something? Is that why?"

"I don't know... I think so. Maybe." He sounded very unsure, as though he just wanted me to stop asking him questions.

"Well you know, you fucked up really bad man. I don't know why you did this, and you're a fucking idiot to do this, but you can't undo it now. You've fucked up and need to acknowledge that.""I know, I know. What do I do?" he asked eagerly. I didn't believe his "I know"s, but I still had compassion for the kid. I knew he had made a colossal mistake, and he needed to know how to face up to it, to stare it in the eye and admit that it was his. I've made enough mistakes in my life to know how difficult that is.

"Look, what you told me you told me in confidence. But you need to own up to this now Jose. You've fucked up, and you need to come to them and tell them the truth. You need to be a man about this, and admit to everything. And it's not easy, I know it's not easy, and you're going to be in for a long road after this, but that's part of being a man and facing the music when you fuck up."
He denied this immediately. He insisted that there was some way out.

"No Jose. There is nothing. You've painted yourself into a corner with all of these lies you've been telling these people."

"There has to be something. If I tell them I'm going to quit poker, then they will let me go won't they? I know they will. I know them Dog, they care about me, they're my friends, they don't want to hurt me."

I told him then as I told him several times during that conversation - "Jose, shut the fuck up."He began getting more and more anxious and desperate. I told him he needed to come clean about everything, that he needed to tell everyone the truth. As I started gathering more details about the specifics of what he did and to whom, I caught him in a few more minor lies which made me really angry. I told him - if you're going to lie to me too, then I'm done with this shit Jose. He apologized hurriedly and claimed that his memory about certain things were hazy. Writing all this, it baffles me that it took me as long to stop feeling compassion for him as I did. But although I knew he was frantic and full of shit, I also knew I was still on his side. I believed that deep down he was a good kid who had lost his way, and making this mistake was part of what it would take for him to grow up and learn. At that point, he was still just a stupid kid who had stolen some candy from the store. I couldn't yet wrap my mind around the entirety of it - of the fact that he had arranged an elaborate method to scam his friends, that he was lying to them and me and building lie after lie, that he'd been planning and perpetuating all of this for weeks - it was too hard to understand Jose as someone who would do that. I don't honestly think it sunk in that he could really do something like that until a few days later.

He started to make suggestions about killing himself - nothing outright, but dropping obvious references to it, saying things like maybe he should just drive his bike off a cliff and go out in a blaze of glory. I told him not to joke about it and got really angry. He started to become resigned to this becoming public and was talking more and more as though his career was already over. I told him he needs to not say another word to anyone until he's ready to confess and say everything. But the last I heard of him before he logged off Skype, he was still vehemently insisting that there was some other way out of this, that I didn't see everything. The last thing he said before he logged off Skype was that he was going for a bike ride. It was still 3:30 AM and I had yet to pack for my flight.


Breaking his Scam to the Group


At this point, I didn't believe that Jose would have the balls to own up to this. And the more he thrashed and made excuses, the more I was convinced that I had to tell them myself rather than wait in vain for him to confess. After I had spoken to Nick, he invited me into a group chat with all of his HU group sans Jose, since I asked him to keep me posted about the investigation before I left. I steeled myself, and started talking to the group and telling them everything I knew - the contents of which have for the most part already been posted on 2p2, so you can read them there. Obviously those logs were intended to be private, but now that they've been posted in a public forum I'm going to do what I can to explain the breadth of them. The remainder of this blog will be in point format replying to specific remarks related to what has gone on on 2p2 as far as I've read it.

1. The first and most obvious thing is that as soon as this scam was uncovered, I did what I could to inform everyone within the group of what was going on. I relayed to them everything that Jose had told me and as I was flying around from Austin to Dallas to London to Malaga, I repeatedly logged into Skype when I could to keep tabs with the group and kept calling Jose's phone to try to get back into contact with him (he disappeared for a while after that first conversation). By intervening as I did, I figured that I had taken it on this debacle as my responsibility, since the people in the group trusted me and saw me as somebody with control over Jose when he had distanced himself from them, and Jose trusted me and would (sometimes) do what I told him to.I was also in contact with Jose and advising him as strongly as I could to contact his sponsors and let them know that this scandal was going to break, to tell his mother and girlfriend what he had done, and to prepare a public statement.

(Note: I did not write his last statement)

2. I originally did not want this to go public for several reasons. The first and foremost was that soon after all of this happened (not immediately), I realized that Jose had also involved us in the Dollarman scam. This occurred to me I think on my flight to Malaga that I remembered the messages he had sent me before about it. This is something that I never intended to air publicly or let anyone know other than me, Jungle, and Jose, for several reasons. First, if Jose immediately lost his Lock sponsorship, there was a distinct possibility that they would seize all of his funds (which were mostly ours). Second, if this goes public, Jose might pull a runner anyway and fuck us on our stake money. Third, I knew that the moment I brought up the fact that Jose had pulled this shit on us as well and brought into question the integrity of our relationship, I wouldn't be able to predict how he'd act towards me or Jungle and how much control we'd have over the situation. The point at which he stops cooperating with us is the point at which we lose the upper hand. So I wanted to be very careful when and how I brought it up.

This was a concern that I couldn't voice to the group, because I knew that they were in contact with Jose as well (and they would probably become even more bloodthirsty and pissed off if they knew Jose had done it to us as well). I knew if I spooked him both Jungle and I would be fucked. So I wanted them to hold off or possibly not go public at all so that Jungle and I could get our money back and make our way out of this situation. Now that things have reached this point, obviously I have to go out and say this to protect my reputation, which is worth more to me than the equity that we had in Jose's account. So, yes, this kinda sucks.

3. But those who are suggesting that I had an emotional attachment to Jose are right as well. You might ask why would you feel sorry for somebody who's so clearly done something scummy? Well, the last people I'm going to expect to understand some explanation of this are NVGers, so I'm not going to bother. But I also have enough self-respect to admit that yes, at least when I first heard his confession, I did genuinely feel compassion for Jose and didn't want his career/life ruined by his mistake, at least not permanently. That obviously went away the more I learned about all of this, but I won't say it wasn't there and motivating me initially. Make of that what you will, I don't really care.

4. Yes, Jungle and I wanted to cover our asses from the impending hurricane of NVG stupidity. While I was in the Dallas airport, I assured everyone involved that if Jose was still alive (an important contingency) then we would ensure that he paid out whatever was owed by the scammed individuals. He also promised this himself early on. Honestly, a lot of the reason that I promised this is because I knew that Jose would pay people out anyway, but also because I didn't want the people in the group to become hysterical that Jose would pull a runner and not pay anyone. I figured that if I committed myself to that promise, Jose wouldn't have the balls to pussy out and make me pay, and also that the group was more at rest. But yes, I think emotionally I was also still playing out the big brother role that I hadn't yet abandoned yet at that point.

When Jose's Lock account got locked once we reached Gibraltar and I spoke with Jungle in person, we agreed that we should pay via bank wire to ensure that everyone involved received their funds immediately without worry. We wanted to be as amenable as we could to those who got scammed, recognizing that we were in a position of authority, and spent most of that night cursing Jose for being so fucking stupid and working out the details with the group.

The group made several promises to us to be as vague as possible about our involvement in all of this. We knew given the stupidity that runs rampant on NVG that once this scandal broke we would have to deal with a huge shitstorm of accusations and conspiracy theories if our names were tied to this story. Well, turns out we probably made a pretty bad decision there, since the way our names leaked out ended up being a lot more sensational than the truth, so it caused this whole debacle. Figures.

5. I don't know why Jose did it. I really don't. I wish I knew, I wish I could make some sense of it, but I can't. He's a fucking idiot. My friends have warned me repeatedly not to throw him under the bus though for a number of reasons, but everything that has unfolded on 2p2 has left me with no choice. The person I knew 5 days ago seems totally different from the person I see Jose as now. To be honest, it wasn't until I heard about him running the same scam on Sauce that it hit me that this wasn't just a momentary lapse of judgment, but a calculated plan, and that Jose was just truly a piece of shit.

6. Oh, and anyone who's saying that I was trying to "muddy Sauce" - shut the fuck up.

7. Lastly, just wanted to say that Ashton tweeted all of that while we were on a plane to London from Malaga. He had not spoken to us and did not know most of the details of this story.

Addenda:

8. I suppose it's also worth mentioning that yes, we vouched for Jose. We made a mistake to do so. That was also part of the reason that we felt that we should make sure that everyone gets paid out and that this situation gets resolved, but there were more factors than that. We made a big mistake in trusting him and are obviously paying the cost.

9. Yes, Jungle and I are angry. We are very, very angry. You can probably tell from the tone of most of this blog actually, haha. Half of our conversations over the last four days have been interrupted with random "why did he do it?"s and "god, that stupid fucking kid"s. We have been in touch with Jose, we've been in touch with the people who were affected by the scam, and that's as far as our anger needs to go. We have no business airing it out on a public forum, so please stop trying to tell us that we're not angry.

So there. Now you know everything there is to know. Now calm the fuck down, pack up the drama, and let's call it a night.

tldr

cardrunners is full of hustlers at highstakes.

i wonder what caby thinks about all this.

cool story bro... I wonder does ANYONE buy that?

HEY... what if we start a "boycott cardrunners" thread at 2p2?

but it should have full LP support. lets do it for the lulz!

spent the whole day reading the updates.

[x]entertained
[ ]time well spent
[x]will check again first thing tomorrow lol

On August 08 2011 07:11 whamm! wrote: spent the whole day reading the updates. [x]entertained [ ]time well spent [x]will check again first thing tomorrow lol

Hehehe, so fucking true! Somebody wants to give cliffs on Dheads confession?

On August 08 2011 07:06 EvilSky wrote: cool story bro... I wonder does ANYONE buy that?

lol i was reading the whole thing asking out loud if he actually thinks the majority of the reader base is stupid enough to believe that dumb post.

he's doing that standard scammer thing which is to slowly admit to little bits of info as it becomes more obvious he can not outright reject them. soo tilting.

yeah, DOG's post is really not very convincing, rofl I had the exact same response as nolan's above


too bad, cuz I like to respect smart people who write well.. but not those who allow sociopathic tendencies to rule their decisionmaking..

On August 08 2011 07:59 Night2o1 wrote: yeah, DOG's post is really not very convincing, rofl I had the exact same response as nolan's above too bad, cuz I like to respect smart people who write well.. but not those who allow sociopathic tendencies to rule their decisionmaking..

obviously he's not that smart.

will wait for cliffs on dih's plea for innocence lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Miguel_Arroyo

dogishead should get tips from this guy.

the ultimate scam artist.

this guy's the illest! ain't nobody can touch this mofo! LOL

Dogishead is a solid bullshitter

Now calm the fuck down, pack up the drama, and let's call it a night.

michaeljordan_lol.gif

I cant believe he would make such a brazen statement at the end of his stream of bullshit

On August 08 2011 01:05 BILAT_POWER!!! wrote: Show nested quote + On August 08 2011 00:59 k4ir0s wrote:   On August 07 2011 23:51 Daut wrote: JM looks HORRIBLE here. does anyone else find it fishy that girah challenged durrrr to a hu challenge? to me that looks like haseeb/jungleman about to do a much much much worse and actually illegal/unethical version of what cts/stinger/townsend did to isildur. wow. it looks like that's what they were planning on doing.. :/ hate scumbag scammers so maybe jungleman playing durrrr challenge is actually jungleman/dogishead/sauce1234 vs durrrr?

prob just jungle / sauce,doubt dogishead has any edge here

Grrrrrr he got me with the old "write an explanation so tedious, long-winded and boring that the reader is too exhausted to question it and simply can't be bothered" trick. I've only just recovered my senses.

On August 08 2011 09:25 TalentedTom wrote: Show nested quote + On August 08 2011 01:05 BILAT_POWER!!! wrote:   On August 08 2011 00:59 k4ir0s wrote:   On August 07 2011 23:51 Daut wrote: JM looks HORRIBLE here. does anyone else find it fishy that girah challenged durrrr to a hu challenge? to me that looks like haseeb/jungleman about to do a much much much worse and actually illegal/unethical version of what cts/stinger/townsend did to isildur. wow. it looks like that's what they were planning on doing.. :/ hate scumbag scammers so maybe jungleman playing durrrr challenge is actually jungleman/dogishead/sauce1234 vs durrrr? prob just jungle / sauce,doubt dogishead has any edge here

meh, jungle/sauce could have colluded on their own without any of this other stuff if they really wanted to.

Girah was obviously lavishing the attention he was getting so challenging durrrr was a natural consequence of that. Given how simplistic the scam actually was, i doubt there was a carefully crafted masterplan to cheat Durrrr in his own challenge - but maybe.

cliffnotes any1? ^_^

updates--When I'm bored, I'm just going to update this post with more information surrounding this instead of making a bunch of individual posts, until it becomes outdated enough for a re-write and someone else takes over updates are at the bottom.

its kind of hard to make cliffs because there is a bunch of conflicting information and lots of possibilities but here is a partially incomplete rundown

Facts:
-When Girah originally surfaced, the strongest endorsements came from DOGISHEAD and Jungleman

-Jose was coaching for $700/hour

-Through this, Jose did the classic, "Sweat someone while they play your online poker Alias" scam.

-Jungleman, and DOG planned to move into a house in Portugal with Jose aka Girah.

-Jungleman has made little public response so far

-DOG made a long winded blogpost in which (after it is already clear to all) he admitted to multiaccounting, in this specific instance by playing on Girah's account, and some other stuff supporting the below scenario 1. His blog reeked of bullshit overall.

-DOG also stated that he acted as an agent to Girah in many respects (Editing/rewriting his posts and stuff)

-There are multiple conflicting claims of debts between DOG/Jungleman and Girah in DOG and Girah's explanations or other posts.

-So far, it is known that Jose won about $30k with his sweat-you-play-me scam. Bizarrely, one of the victims has been reimbursed but I don't think they mentioned who reimbursed them.

-Girah confessed to the scam

-Before the scam became public, the victims talked to DOG about it. He offered to reimburse those who were scammed so long as they did not make it public (aka post it in 2p2). He also insisted that Sauce be included in the list of possible troublemakers, when by all accounts Sauce is only a casual acquaintance of Girah.

Selected Scenarios:

1. Girah aka Jose may of really had amazing, legit online poker results. Then went on a massive downer and has recently been playing on a 5/10 stake from DOG and Jungleman on which he was apparently 50k in makeup, by DOG's claim. Jose then acted on his own with the sweat-you-play-me scam and was busted.




2. Girah may be a made up persona, fronted by a kid named Jose while DOG and Jungleman worked behind the scenes. This one is more theoretical.. but the Girah personality had done things such as accept the Durrrr challenge (which doesn't make sense if he is busto on a stake), and it could of been profitable for DOG or specifically Jungleman to play vs Durrrr through the Girah alias.
Then Girah, being a young and inexperienced sociopath went rogue and tried running the $30k scam on the side.

-The reason that its hard to accept that everything was on the up-and-up until Jose went Rogue is that DOG and Jungleman really haven't been very clear in their explanations of the going-ons.. many people suspect there is more to the story




these notes r pretty incomplete cuz I got bored half way through writing em and I realized that cliffnotes are supposed to be short

updates
shady background information on Haseeb/DOGISHEAD/ipokeder
--He has been shown to engage in social manipulation and deceit. + Show Spoiler +

you should prob write jungleman and not Jman
thx for the cliffs

New Girah Conspiracy Theory

-Girah had legitimate results, but somewhat hyped up skills. His dream run up the stakes of online poker evidently never included a major downswing lower than -15BI. He therefore never developed the ability to deal with a downswing on an emotional level. He went on a downswing and got a stake from Jman + DIH. His downswing continued and he was now 50k in makeup. Despite assurances from DIH and Jman that this was acceptable, he could not stand to be that much in debt and resorted to an insane and stupid scam in order to make it up and get back on his own money.

o ya fixed

I always think jungleman = jman galfond = galfond imo



the only prob with that theory is DOG's behavior around it all.. he tried to cover up the scam. and he himself has made it known that he has access to the girah account and has played under it at least once. he also hasn't been very forthright in response to it all. Granted, his long ass blog post is in accordance with his usual writing style, but it isn't what this situation called for and doesn't qualify as an appropriate breakdown of his relationship with Girah IMO.

furthermore when DOG was trying to cover up the scam he still intended to move in with jose (who was then a known and admitted scammer) as long as it all blew over..

On August 08 2011 10:49 longple wrote: cliffnotes any1? ^_^

So there was this kid playing euro sites suspiciously quickly climbing the ranks of poke... wait a second, did Haseeb write your suspiciously well written 'revelation' blog post too? Who's backing you? The truth will always come out, no point in trying to hide it

ok fuck quotes I don't get how they work

DOGISHEAD SAID:
"Once we knew Jose had scammed us as well, we knew we had to be very careful with how we proceeded, and if Jose was some kind of con artist then a whole lot could go wrong if he felt cornered enough to cut and run. I think with substantial sums of our money in his account, it's not hard to understand why we didn't want this going public immediately and basically having him lose all incentive to protect his reputation in general or with us.

Also, it's blowing my mind how easy you people think it is to invent a person and to get him sponsored, how to get tens of high stakes players to acknowledge his poker prowess, and that I'd have the time, know-how, or foresight to do all of this. Like I said before, if all of this was a scam that Jose was setting up - then the scam was already in place. All he had to do was keep collecting checks for making videos, his sponsorships, show up and donk around at some tourneys and become legit poker famous. And then, to top it all off, to agree to pay people back on top of reparations? It doesn't make sense as a premeditated scam. At all. Which is why I have trouble believing he invented everything as one giant trick or something."


post from Haseeb just a moment ago in the 2p2 thread

personally.. his actions, specifically the attempt to keep Jose's scamming underwraps does make some sense in this context but I have a strong niggling feeling that there's still more here, due to Haseeb's deceitful reputation and how much he has invested in Jose (he's spent quite a bit of time acting as his pseudo-agent.. I don't feel like tracking down the post that outlined all of the things he's done for him but its much more than just editing Jose's posts)


haseeb making a bunch of posts in 2p2 atm

On March 03 2011 15:49 Gumster wrote: its fake obv, should've fucking guessed it at the lawyer part, if not then this: "I am José, the so called 'Portuguese poker prodigy'." nicka' plz

high five me byrnesam

as far as the conspiracy theory of Girah being a made up personality, I keep wondering to myself "whats the motivation for DOG to put in so much work?" (which he says girah never paid him for but was supposed to pay an undetermined amount at an undetermined "eventually".

Someone made a pretty good post on 2p2: Jose and his big reputation could give very expensive coaching, and be sponsored, while giving a cut to DOG for putting him in that position. Along with having a credibly good/unsuspiscious account to crush Euro's with via multi accounting, it seems to be sufficient motivation.


god I'm so bored and OD'd on caffeine sry for spam XD going to try to lay off until something real interesting happens

On August 08 2011 05:41 Dogishead wrote: Obviously, it was very wrong of me to do that, on several levels. It's one of those things that happens and that everybody does and has been guilty of at one time or another, but yes, I acknowledge that it was wrong.

On August 07 2011 10:31 Oly wrote: This is so fucking weird now that numerous others are saying he scammed them; it's like a spot where no value hands or bluffs make sense. My current theory, which makes as little sense as anything else but just for fun is: Jose was paid by jungle/sauce/pitf as a shill to allow them to multiaccount and play on euro sites as originally suspected, he then used the reputation he gained to go mad scamming on his own for small sums because he wasn't actually making that much himself. If anyone lays me 10-1 on this version I'll put a few hundo on it...

this exactly

Haseeb cut from CardRunners for his admission of multiaccounting on Girah's s/n

http://www.cardrunners.com/article/93...s-statement-regarding-haseeb-qureshi/

Night, don't stop posting you are good for this tread. Fuck shit is getting real now, wonder what Dog will do after this soul crushing

so basically from the little i read brilliant poker players who are probably bad at many other things get fucked over/get involved with scummy people and hilarity and shitstorm ensues.

now it looks like a lot of people are making a lot of excuses etc tryign to make themselves look better.

hard to sift through pages and pages of text though.

Just to make sure who DogIsHead is:

Is it the same guy who used the nicknames Moloch, Ipokeder and PokerInTheFace quite a long time ago here at LP and at PS. Then built up a pretty bad reputation here at LP and was forced to stop posting here?

he is definitely ipokeder

I wasn't around so dunno about the rest

wait wait wait He is THAT ipokeder?

oh lol.




The hilarity increased by a GAZILJON

Yes Joe, and when I knew him he went by the name of "Trevor". 6 years ago when we played brood war together. Nobody else finds it funny that he never goes to live events?

On August 08 2011 16:18 Night2o1 wrote: he is definitely ipokeder I wasn't around so dunno about the rest

If he is Ipokeder then he is Moloch and PokerInTheFace for sure too - those were his LP id's, Ipokeder his PS screenname.

I considered it shady from the beginning when I didnt realise who DogIsHead was, but now it got way shadier for me.

On August 08 2011 16:00 Joe wrote: Just to make sure who DogIsHead is: Is it the same guy who used the nicknames Moloch, Ipokeder and PokerInTheFace quite a long time ago here at LP and at PS. Then built up a pretty bad reputation here at LP and was forced to stop posting here?

yes, in 2 + 2 thread i saw someone called him moloch and i know he used to use ipokeder nick too, then created Dogishead becasue some shady things/bad reputation with Ipokeder nick

On August 08 2011 16:00 Joe wrote: Just to make sure who DogIsHead is: Is it the same guy who used the nicknames Moloch, Ipokeder and PokerInTheFace quite a long time ago here at LP and at PS. Then built up a pretty bad reputation here at LP and was forced to stop posting here?

didnt he ask to be banned himself cuz he was trolling too much?

magical trevor?

dogishead is ridiculously good at poker, you dont need to do shady stuff and fuck people over when you got this kind of gift, I guess some people are just scumbags by essence

On August 08 2011 16:37 EvilSky wrote: Show nested quote + On August 08 2011 16:00 Joe wrote: Just to make sure who DogIsHead is: Is it the same guy who used the nicknames Moloch, Ipokeder and PokerInTheFace quite a long time ago here at LP and at PS. Then built up a pretty bad reputation here at LP and was forced to stop posting here? didnt he ask to be banned himself cuz he was trolling too much?

I dont remember that, but I remember there was a thread explaining bans of certain people and his was explained as "trouble maker".

I dont remember it all well, but I think there was some sort of scam or at least shady behavior where he figured somehow on the sidelines. (Unless I am mixing him up with someone else.)

He asked himself to get banned from lp cause he felt like he was wasting his time here or something. After that he went from like 5/10 to 200/400 in a year or so

he changed his name from ipokeder to dogishead when he turned 18. other than the current retardation and the ashman propbet which got over sensationalized, what shady stuff has haseeb done?

Pretty interested as well, anyone who was around lp.net that long ago could actually elaborate what you guys mean by shady stuff?

It's worth noting the exceptional similarity in writing style between Girah's apology and moloch's usual dramatic descriptive style. For example: "There is a quote on the wall in my school which I always see as I pass the nurse's office. It says that the real mistake is not tripping up, but staying down. I thought of that and that's why I'm writing this." I am loathe to feel be like one of the nvg conspiracy fools, but it's extremely weird. At this point I'll place money on evens that moloch wrote ("helped write" ) the apology post.

edit: actually it's an absurd coincidence of style beyond belief - I'll put real money where my mouth is and would lay 3-1 that he wrote that post (yes, my 300 to your 100).

edit 2: am I being silly or has dih already said he helped write the apology post? Because the more I look at it the more it is completely clear as bloody day that he wrote every word.

i think one of the weirdest things that people aren't bringing up too much, is in the skype log girah refers to his "rich friend from school" , two things

one he says his rich friends day is a banker, then like 5 minutes later he literally says his dad died two years ago. obv he coulda used present tense before by mistake or whatever.

but then the skype group guy asks where the kid from his school is from and girah says "i dont know" (lol, he refers to said peron as his best friend earlier)

and then even weirder he says "his parents are from strange countries, like spain or france or something"

and he's supposed to be from portugal? i just dont see someone from portugal calling spain and france "weird/strange countries" under any circumstance. he also uses "mum" instead of "mom" which i kinda thought was bizarre as well but w/e.

Yes, and I think Girah's post is way too good for a 17-year-old guy from Portugal that hasn't lived or worked in any english speaking country (maybe he is a language prodigy as well)

On August 08 2011 17:29 Daut wrote: he changed his name from ipokeder to dogishead when he turned 18. other than the current retardation and the ashman propbet which got over sensationalized, what shady stuff has haseeb done?

He just admitted multi-accounting..

Also he has always been a douchebag and a plain liar (if you read the ashman propbet entirely you will see all his lies and hypocrisy) and now the super shady genius he endorsed so strongly turns out to be a scammer.


Also he says they owed him money so they were paying the guys cheated, however he was playing under their stake... makes no sense.

there's also the homosexual angle.
lol

Just posting this for the comment on his English. Pretty darn good English for a Portuguese kid ;o.

has/dog/pitf/ipok/molo

[x] leave lp
[x] win munnies
[x] scum





Jose

tollundman@2p2

Bit of an aside but had a look at that OPs posting history. He goes from using text speak and bad spelling in Jan 2011 to suddenly becoming very articulate in June 2011. I guess dogishead took over posting duty for a while!

Semirelated that all the skypelogs where he types are fucking hilarious. It's usually the other way around (I assume) for non natives. Decent writing/reading and awkward speech.

Free video from Jungleman/DIH as read by Girah
(you can hear him flipping pages/reading errors)
http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/19725/

On August 08 2011 19:10 Twisted wrote: Just posting this for the comment on his English. Pretty darn good English for a Portuguese kid ;o.

oh wow that is absolute bullshit, there is no way in hell somebody who has never lived for years in a native English speaking country could ever speak that fluently with near perfect pronunciation.

On August 08 2011 20:11 Baal wrote: Show nested quote + On August 08 2011 19:10 Twisted wrote: Just posting this for the comment on his English. Pretty darn good English for a Portuguese kid ;o. oh wow that is absolute bullshit, there is no way in hell somebody who has never lived for years in a native English speaking country could ever speak that fluently with near perfect pronunciation.

language prodigy. his english winrate is 12ptbb

RE: Girahs english

I read that he attends an international school in Portugal, so all his lessons etc are in english.

I know a guy who was educated at an international school in Dubai and he has a very similar "Americanized" accent