PeachyMer

Druff, can you finally come clean on what you know? I know you're a couple degrees of separation away from this (You -> Reggiman -> BradL (staked by Reggiman) -> PeachyMer (supposedly dated BradL).

It's pretty obv that the PeachyMer account account was either a multiaccount of one person (like BradL), or was some sort of shared account used for MA'ing by multiple friends. There's no chance that the PokerStars Pro / Twitter persona "Mer Brit" is the person who was playing on that account 100% of the time, at least not in the pre-Pokerstars Pro time frame.

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Originally Posted by JoeSeboksMicropenis

Druff, can you finally come clean on what you know? I know you're a couple degrees of separation away from this (You -> Reggiman -> BradL (staked by Reggiman) -> PeachyMer (supposedly dated BradL).

It's pretty obv that the PeachyMer account account was either a multiaccount of one person (like BradL), or was some sort of shared account used for MA'ing by multiple friends. There's no chance that the PokerStars Pro / Twitter persona "Mer Brit" is the person who was playing on that account 100% of the time, at least not in the pre-Pokerstars Pro time frame.

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Before I get to that, here is what I said about PeachyMer when the original controversy blew up last year:

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February 19, 2011:

I have a lot to say here. I also have to balance saying what I want to say versus betraying the trust of people who told me things in confidence.

I'll try my best in this post to reveal as much as possible without going back on any promises.

Let me start from the beginning...

Sometime around 2006 or 2007, I took notice of PeachyMer. She played mid-high limit LHE on Pokerstars, had an avatar of a very attractive girl in her 20s, and seemed to "know" TONS of the limit hold 'em studs of the day. As soon as she'd sit down in one of my games, the asskissing that occurred was off the charts, even by desperate internet geek standards.

Despite her apparent closeness with so many players, something still struck me as wrong. I suspected that she wasn't what she seemed. My first suspicion was that "she" was a dude.

I forgot how this happened, but somehow I ended up talking to her on AIM. I wasn't shy about expressing my doubts about her. She took them offensively and argued with me, but oddly never quit talking to me. She would claim to be fed up with my accusations and swear she was done talking to me forever, only to initiate another friendly AIM conversation the next day. It was really odd. I still didn't know if this was really a man or a woman.

I got that question answered shortly thereafter. I was spontaneously three-wayed onto a phone conversation with Peach, BradL, and Mark Newhouse. Apparently Peachy was very close friends with both of these guys. Peachy indeed sounded very female, and very southern. We all spoke on the phone for about an hour or so. I snuck in a few questions/comments to Peachy, just to make sure the girl on the phone was the same one I had been AIMing with. She passed with flying colors. At the very least, Peachy was female.

Still, a lot of other questions were left unanswered. I found out more about Peachy. Apparently there was a very large number of young, male online poker pros that she befriended. In fact, some, like Newhouse and BradL, became extremely close with her, sharing many personal thoughts and moments on the phone. Our own Dustin "neverwin" Woolf also had such a friendship with Peachy, as did Mike "Schneids" Schneider, who was planning a move to LA from his native Minnesota, with Peachy promising to become his roommate.

There were countless others. The girl literally spent all day and all night AIMing and talking on the phone with various high limit online poker players. The number of hours per day she devoted to this was staggering. There was no way she had time to do anything else, except perhaps play online poker in the background.

However, despite all of these close friendships, there was one common denominator to them all: None had ever met Peachy in person, nor had any of them even seen her on webcam. Even worse, there were tons of supposed "near misses" where Peachy was supposed to meet these guys, but none ever panned out. She always canceled at the last minute -- sometimes due to her own health problems, sometimes due to her mother's health problems, sometimes due to other unknown personal issues. Even the LA roommate situation with Schneids (predictably) fell through. She also made repeated plans to visit Commerce and play live poker, all of which were also canceled at the last minute.

In my 20+ years online, I knew a phony when I saw one. This girl was hiding something. She spent many months doing nothing but talking to these guys and cultivating countless close friendships (and perhaps more), but always found a way to avoid meeting in person. She even managed to find ways to rebuff offers of guys coming to visit her -- usually with "sick mother" stories.

Initially, I suspected that this was about money. She seemed to target young, high-limit, male online poker players -- known easy marks for clever female scammers. However, I quickly came to realize that there was no financial angle at all. Peachy claimed to be from a rich family and was taken care of by large trust funds. While those stories seemed incredible and hard to swallow, it did seem that she wasn't at all interested in these guys' money. Everyone reported that she never asked for a dime, and in fact refused offers for stakes into cash games and tournaments. She got close enough to many of these guys to have scammed each one for tens or hundreds of thousands. She didn't, though. Peachy was not in it for the money.

So what was her end game?

I determined it was virtual companionship.

Peachy had a Myspace page. It attempted to reveal carefully concealed details about her life, without giving away any real secrets. Instead, it answered a lot of questions that she was trying to avoid.

She had hundreds of "friends" on Myspace, but every last one of them knew her through online poker. Not one person in her native Georgia was on her friends list. Not one friend posted comments referring to any time they spent together in person. Not one person on the page was a real-life friend, acquaintance, or family member. They were all online friends that had never met her, yet the page masqueraded as her only Myspace profile.

The Myspace page also featured pictures -- a lot of them. There were over 200 pictures of her world travels, including some charity visits to developing countries. However, none of those 200 or so travel pictures featured her face. They were all shots of scenery or the local natives. The best you ever saw was a shot of her legs. Indeed, there was nothing to indicate that she didn't simply lift these pictures from some travel website.

This brought up another strange thing about Peachy -- her picture. She had a total of one picture that showed her face -- a distant full-body shot of her with her legs up on a boat. Despite having a face obscured by sunglasses, the girl in the picture was clearly attractive and outgoing-looking. If Peachy really looked anything like that, she would be sure to send countless pictures of herself to her e-friends. But she didn't. It was just that one. All of her hundreds of other pictures did not show her face. None of her e-friends -- even the close ones like BradL, neverwin, or Newhouse, had seen any more of her.

Discussing Peachy with these guys was maddening. She had some kind of spell over them. I guess it was because she was easy to talk to, and they had all forged close friendships with her. They got emotionally attached to the friendship and didn't want to admit to themselves that she could be a fraud.

"Why does she flake on meeting everyone? Why has everyone only seen just one picture of her? Why does her Myspace not have any real life friends or family members on it? Why does she make up excuses not to meet you if you offer to come to Georgia? She claims to have a rich and busy life, but she spends all day and all night talking to online poker guys. How do you guys explain all of this?"

They wouldn't give me answers, and I was told repeatedly to butt out. Eventually I did.

Eventually BradL and Peachy were dating. This is where I have to clam up. I know some details about this that I can't reveal, or I'd be breaking someone's trust. They are no longer dating, but I believe that they did meet in person. I also believe that BradL was the only guy in poker to actually meet Peachy -- unless there are some more recent developments that I'm unaware of.

Anyway, I came to realize that Peachy was simply a lonely girl with some sort of physical issue -- perhaps weight, perhaps illness/disability, perhaps something else, that made it difficult for her to make real life friends. She found online poker, and realized how unbalanced the gender distribution was. Simply being female with a friendly, outgoing personality is a guaranteed friend-maker. She enjoyed the phone and AIM companionship that these guys provided.

Why did she "go after" high limit players? Simply because they were the "cool kids", so to speak. While she could have made friends in any game, getting close to the high limit guys gave her somewhat of a status and popularity. She would enter a high limit game, even just as a sit-out railbird, and the entire room would glow with admiration. That's some feeling to get when you're used to being ignored, and perhaps pitied, by everyone else in society.

What about the money? Not sure. I believe she has enough to where she doesn't have a real need for it. Perhaps she's rich, perhaps she's not. Perhaps she's not rich, but her family is, and they take care of her. It could be one of many things, but it remains clear to me that money wasn't her need.

Do I have any proof of the above?

No.

But I'd be shocked if the truth was very far from what I've theorized.

Take a hypotethetical. Say you're female and from a relatively wealthy family, but you have been unfortunate enough to be stuck in a wheelchair for life. While you have a sweet, outgoing personality, everyone you meet sees your wheelchair and not you. You get on Pokerstars and get close to a lot of the young, male, high limit players there. Do you send them pictures of you in the wheelchair, or do you send them shots of some random hot girl whose picture you found on Myspace. If you're not going to ever ask them for money, and you're not ever going to meet in person, what's the harm in that little white lie, right?

I'm not saying that Peachy is in a wheelchair, but it's something along those lines. She isn't the person she claims. She doesn't have the life she describes. She's not really a bad person, but rather someone who feels forced to live a fantasy life on the internet.

So what of Charder and the countless well-respected guys defending her in the 2+2 thread? Meet just a small percentage of the many guys she's gotten close to over the years. They defend her legitimacy because they've been convincing themselves of the same thing for the past few years. If any have met her, she has talked them into keeping their mouths shut about the truth -- and perhaps they do out of sympathy or a feeling of friendship.

And what of the recent multi-accounting/ghosting accusations? I know little about that, but the way Pokerstars is dancing around the issue (laughably bending their rules to accommodate her), I think it's fairly clear that they have some validity.

Why is Pokerstars defending her so vigorously?

They were kind of tricked.

She knew so many high-profile online players with good reputations, and they all vouched for her. Now they don't want to admit they were hoodwinked, so they're trying to stand in her corner and hope the controversy goes away.

Now, is there a chance I'm wrong about all or most of this?

Yes.

But I think it's a very small chance.

If Peachy would like to come on radio and answer the tough questions, and I find myself convinced that I made a mistake, I will be the first one to apologize to her.

Needless to say, she never came on my radio show, and her subsequent media appearances (including a terrible softball interview with Phil Galfond) just raised more questions than they answered.

I shot most of my load with the above post, but I did hold some things back.

Now that Pokerstars is over for US players (which it wasn't at the time of that posting), and now that enough time has passed, I'll share the remaining details that I know.


Physical Appearance

The picture of her on the Pokerstars webpage (and especially the "boat" picture mentioned in my February 2011 post) are either fake or old. Brandon very briefly met her at Commerce, when she was staying with BradL. He could tell you more about it, but as he said on radio last year, she looked nothing like either pic, and he didn't find her attractive. Brandon did say that she wasn't deformed, crippled, or hideously ugly.

Speaking of BradL, he was the only one to have met her (that I know of) other than Brandon, and he spent a lot of time with her -- both at Commerce and in her native Georgia. BradL was never a friend of mine, but we'd talk a little bit when I'd see him around. He also revealed to me that she wasn't what she claimed to be physically, but did add that she was "a really nice person". He would not elaborate about her looks.



Multi-Accounting

BradL and Peachy shared accounts, both in tournaments and cash games. I discovered this on my own when "BradL", who was normally a good limit hold 'em cash player, suddenly became weak-tight. At the same time, Peachy suddenly showed up in the high limit hold 'em games on Stars, and was playing a strong, aggressive game. Didn't take a genius to realize that the ol' switcheroo had occurred. I asked Peachy, and she admitted it. I don't recall them playing in the same game, and if they did, it wasn't very common. So I don't think there was collusion -- just standard multi-accounting, which of course was wrong.

The more high profile multi-accounting situation occurred when "Peachy" won a big tournament on Stars. Actually, I forget if she won or finished something like 2nd or 3rd, but she took down a lot of money either way. Apparently Peachy was very nervous that I would out the multi-accounting situation at the time, and Brad assured her that "Druff is cool, he won't say anything about this." In reality, I never had to make that decision, because I didn't pay attention to tournament results, and didn't know that she had won. I only found out about this when Brad approached me months later at a WSOP party to thank me for keeping quiet. I just nodded my head and changed the subject.

When the multi-accounting suspicion came to light (mainly in 2011, when she became a Pokerstars pro), the site softly acknowledged that someone else had used her account at some point during that big tournament. They claimed that it was some sort of "emergency", and suddenly invented a new rule that it is okay to temporarily let someone take over playing for you in the case of an emergency. This, of course, was suddenly retroactively applied to Peachy's tournament, when no such "rule" existed. This also opened the door to all kinds of "legal" multi-accounting on Stars, as anyone can make up bogus "emergencies" to justify it, and such things are impossible to check out. I'm pretty sure that Stars has since retired that rule since Peachy was dropped as a pro, post-Black-Friday.

Anyway, the suspicions were correct. Someone was on her account, and it was BradL. I don't believe it was taken over in the middle, either. I think it was BradL the whole way, though I suppose it's possible Peachy herself was initially playing, and Brad took over once she had a good stack. I am not clear on how the prize money was eventually split between them.



The Peachy/BradL Relationship

There was indeed a real romantic relationship between Peachy and BradL. The relationship existed almost entirely on the phone and AIM. I believe they only saw each other in person on two occasions, each lasting something like a week. This surprised me for a few reasons. First, BradL is a young, good looking guy. He wasn't your typical internet poker geek who lacked experience (or the ability to get) women. Second, Brad was kind of a degenerate and a live-for-the-moment type, and didn't seem like the type to want to spend hours and hours on the phone with a girl across the country, rather than having real, live sex with her daily. I'm not sure what he got out of the whole thing. Some theorize money, but I don't know. I think he just really got to connect with her (probably more than he had ever connected with anyone), and tolerated the long distance and less than appealing physical aspects of the relationship.

I do know that she told me a surprising amount of their personal business, and often without my asking. This seemed quite disrespectful, in my opinion, as I wasn't particularly close with either of them. In fact, she and I often argued (about her hard to believe stories), and she would swear being done forever talking to me. So we'd go from Peachy swearing she was blocking me from AIM, to her suddenly IMing me 2 weeks later out of the blue and spilling her guts about her problems with Brad. They apparently fought a lot. I won't be an asshole and reveal the specific things they fought about, but the relationship had plenty of problems, which made it even more surprising. I was wondering when Brad would finally slap himself and ask, "WTF am I doing in a phone relationship with a chick in Georgia, when I could get a hot chick locally in Vegas right now?" And that's apparently what he eventually did. Last I checked, Brad had an attractive girlfriend in Vegas. Not sure what caused the end between him and Peachy, but yes, they were involved romantically for at least several months, and perhaps more than a year.

That's all I know. There's lots I still don't know, and will never know, but to be honest, none of this is really important, since she was never scamming anyone. The worst thing she did was multi-account, which was wrong, but is in a whole different ballpark than actual scamming, and I have a feeling that it wasn't her idea in the first place.

Thanks for the write-up Druff. That's pretty much what I suspected.

I hope my posting this in this forum wasn't perceived as an accusation of scamming. I think this story definitely fell into the category of Shadiness though.

Druff, did you hear of any of these players she "befriended" having losing streaks at the online tables during that time? Just a total guess, but after the Girah scam from last year it's not out of the realm of possibility that she was simply trying to "hack" their computers; if you befriend enough high-stakes poker pros surely some of them will have inadequate security on their comps, and AIM is an easy way to get someone to download something.

BUMP

For no reason at all, Peachymer came to mind tonight, so I quickly took some old info I had from a decade ago and took a quick shot at identifying her.

I believe I hit paydirt, and now know her actual name. It's not Mer Brit, as you might have guessed.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find much more from my preliminary searching of that name. From what I can see, she was telling the truth about her age. The name also has no Hendonmob results, and I've never heard of that name in the poker community -- then or now.

This supports my original theory that she was just a no-name Georgia chick in her mid-20s who invented an identity much more interesting than her real life, and befriended a lot of the online poker cool kids of the mid-2000s. I should mention once again that, despite having the opportunity to scam hundreds of thousands of dollars from these guys, she never did. Furthermore, from what I can see, she doesn't appear to be rich. She just wasn't deceiving people for money, but rather for attention/friendship.

I'm not going to post the name here because it's been over 10 years, and she has long left the poker community, so I'm going to let those sleeping dogs lie.

All those pictures and what not she posted before ( the lake, etc) were definitely in Georgia (if there was ever a doubt about that). The lake was recognizable, as were some of the roads I remember she posted pictures of...

I never really believed she was a real poker player - it sounded like she got away with multi-accounting I remember a well known online player (don't remember who) white knighting her on 2+2. All this was obvious to the casual observer, but as you noted she had those guys spellbound.

She was also on Team Pokerstars right up until Black Friday I think?

She used to write a blog on Cardrunners (maybe a continuation of the Myspace one Druff noted) that had lots of pictures and what not so I assumed she was a real person - but it wasn't really obvious as an active observer she was actually existed at all.

Yes, Stars stupidly made her a team pro, without really vetting her, just based upon the fact that she was close with a lot of the online high stakes cool kids at the time.

Eventually it came out that she allowed her boyfriend to log into her account while she was deep in a tournament, and play the rest out for her. Stars made a retroactive rule that you can designate someone else to play for you, in the case of "emergency".

:lol

Obviously everyone knew they were just protecting their team pro. But this wasn't a good look, and she was quietly let go, shortly thereafter. That rule was then rescinded.

It should be noted that all of the guys she tricked were in their 20s, and probably more gullible for that reason. I was the oldest one she talked to (34-35 at the time), but I never bought her lines of bullshit, and I let her know it. This caused constant static between us, where she'd curse me out and tell me she was never talking to me again, only to message me on AIM 2 days later as if nothing ever happened. She and I never had any romantic/sexual vibe to our conversations. Not only did I have a girlfriend at the time, but I wouldn't have been into her anyway, as I never trusted her.

I was able to see how these guys enjoyed her personality, though. If you could look past the lying and outlandish stories, she was very easygoing and pleasant to talk to.

So this was all bullshit?

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2011/...-brit-9829.htm

https://bestbetusa.com/poker/peachy-...s-controversy/

No clue but is interesting how these sites were fooled.

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Originally Posted by The Boz

So this was all bullshit?

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2011/...-brit-9829.htm

https://bestbetusa.com/poker/peachy-...s-controversy/

No clue but is interesting how these sites were fooled.

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Yes, it was all bullshit. Or at least mostly bullshit.

Lots of people were left with egg on their face over this one, including Phil Galfond, who got really close to her (this was before he was with his now-wife).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

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Originally Posted by The Boz

So this was all bullshit?

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2011/...-brit-9829.htm

https://bestbetusa.com/poker/peachy-...s-controversy/

No clue but is interesting how these sites were fooled.

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Yes, it was all bullshit. Or at least mostly bullshit.

Lots of people were left with egg on their face over this one, including Phil Galfond, who got really close to her (this was before he was with his now-wife).

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Mr Detective Druff,

Were those pictures of her in the 2+2 thread of her - not the official pic but the ones that looked like they were bootlegged from social media?

Also - is she related to Zel Miller?

Thanks!