Hindsight is wonderful of course but it's a shame that a bunch of players didn't coordinate to grab Postle's phone and hat off him when was cheatingat the table, so that there was some physical evidence to present.
Hindsight is wonderful of course but it's a shame that a bunch of players didn't coordinate to grab Postle's phone and hat off him when was cheatingat the table, so that there was some physical evidence to present.
It actually didn't need hindsight.
Veronica reported this in March 2019, and the cheating continued for 6 more months.
During that time, Justin could have watched him carefully (if he wasn't in on it, which is a huge IF), and had security grab both Postle's hat and phone as soon as he was acting suspiciously.
New filing in the case today.
Developments:
- Time extended again, from 9/11/20 to 10/1/20
- Settling plaintiffs listed. Veronica is not on the list of settling plaintiffs (which isn't a surprise).
- 60 of the 88 agreed to settle. This is below the threshhold of 65 demanded by Stones, but it seems they're okay with it.
- Mac is going to file a motion to withdraw as the attorney of the 28 non-settling plaintiffs (including Veronica). While this isn't an automatic (the court has to approve it), it was noted that none of these 28 people are objecting, though some were "non-responsive" to communication about the matter. It is likely, in my opinion, that this will be granted. This will happen by September 11.
I have a copy of the filing but I won't bother to post it, because it's not all that interesting, beyond the above.
Most of the 60 names settling aren't known.
However, Jeff "Boski" Sluzinksi and Taylor Carroll (aka "Hart Banson") are among the 60 names who agreed to settle.
As expected, Mac dropped 27 clients today from representation. I thought there were 88 plaintiffs, but maybe there were 87? I counted 60 accepting and 27 rejecting.
I have the filing from today, and see that these people were served by email, and are no longer being represented by Mac.
This is a procedural matter, and nothing shocking or scandalous. This is required in order to exclude them from the settlement. None of the 27 objected to being dropped.
Among the names: Christian Soto Vasquez (coach at Matt Berkey's Solve For Why Academy), Alisha Daniels-Duckworth (the good friend of Veronica's who drank a lot on some of the Postle streams, and recently appeared with her in an interview), Kyle Kitigawa (player and sometimes commentator at Stones -- also played with me at 100-200 limit holdem there), Matt Holtzclaw, and of course Veronica Brill.
Its appears the 88th person is Kasey Mills, who commentated on the game sometimes (similar to Veronica).
I am hearing Kacey was on the fence, but ultimately took the settlement, but I'm not 100% sure. She was not dropped by Mac, according to the document, so I'm assuming what I heard was correct.
I was sure it was a clerical error and Boski got paid twice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
Several avoiding the restrictions of a settle agreement and can tell/sell their stories.
Pretty much an explosion from the Postle side today, as his side is now "speaking out", including both Postle himself and Justin Kuraitis. As you might imagine, his trollish friends on Twitter are going nuts this morning.
I'll start with the Justin statement:
The statement itself (identical to the above, in PDF format) is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EnT...WxHLDY8gf/viewQuote:
I am happy to announce that 62 plaintiffs and their counsel Maurice VerStandig have agreed to dismiss all claims against me in the Veronica Brill vs. Mike Postle case. They have also confirmed they have found no evidence against myself or Stones and have concluded I was not involved in any cheating at Stones. While I am gratified that they now acknowledge the truth, the pain and unfairness of their allegations and the wrath of the social media mob and internet bullying lingers.
On the advice of counsel, I have remained silent and not commented on the parade of false accusations that have been leveled against me. Now that this is over, I want to move on and not spend the next 5 years in the muck. There are some things I need tosay before I move on, because the process has been so disheartening and upsetting.
In the fall of 2019, I watched as the “poker community” and wanna-be “celebrity” commentators on Twitter/YouTube falsely accused me of being a knowing participant in what was allegedly the “biggest poker cheating scandal in history.”
The allegations against me were false. However, the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Gambling Control still conducted an investigation with which I completely and voluntarily cooperated. Because of the investigation and then civil litigation, I was counseled to remain silent and let the process play out without making public comment. I did so, all the while wondering if the record would ever be set straight, if the poker community would ever take me back and if those that falsely accused me would ever apologize or if they would just go on to the next effort to collect clicks and followers.
I watched in utter amazement as Joey Ingram devoted hour after hour to “PostleGate.” Some of the videos were entertaining and they certainly were great for increasing Ingram’s popularity, but as I watched them it became clear that Ingram was peddling false statistics, cherry-picking hands to fit his theories and ignoring data that did not fit his version of the story.
Suddenly facts ceased to be important anymore and it all became about who could come up with the most outlandish story. For example, Marle Cordeiro fanned the flames regarding me and seemed to imply on twitter that my car was purchased with money I obtained from the cheating scandal. In fact, I bought that car from an acquaintance on December 4th 2017 which was more than 8 months before the alleged cheating supposedly started. Doug Polk, Daniel Negreanu, Matt Berkey, Jason Somerville and many others not worth naming also jumped at the chance to be in the spotlight
with numerous false claims.
The propaganda machine that these guys created was prolific but it was all a case of confirmation bias. Anything that fit in their narrative was trumpeted and the many things that contradicted their story were simply ignored.
I am ashamed to say that back in October 2019 after listening to so much propaganda, I even went through a period of time where I wondered if it was possible that Mike Postle had cheated. I remember being so depressed with the thought that I could have missed something so “obvious.” The news spiraled out of control with PokerNews making ridiculous claims, countless op-eds mindlessly parroted and even some mainstream media attention by ESPN, Barstool Sports and Haralabos Voulgaris.
During this time, a Poker media company called Rounderlife emerged from the darkness and was the only one doing actual research. Even the suing parties were relying on the made up internet sleuth data. The “poker community” systematically shut out and ignored RounderLife magazine to make sure that their content did not go mainstream. Why wouldn’t they want it to go mainstream? Was it because RounderLife was putting out factual content that did not support their narrative? Was it easier for Brill and company to claim Rounderlife was biased than to actually address the facts presented?
For example Rounderlife put out an article regarding me that accurately pointed out there were multiple instances where Postle wins big when I am verifiably out of town and loses big when I am verifiably at Stones Gambling Hall (My locations are verifiable by my social media post). This information was COMPLETELY IGNORED by the poker media and conspiracy theorists!
There’s another Rounderlife article which points out that Postle’s win rate was overly inflated by systematically leaving losing sessions off of the lawsuit. If you intentionally exclude losing sessions, guess how that affects the “win rate.” The irony is that multiple losing sessions were unknowingly included in the lawsuit too because the plaintiffs had bad data that said those session were wins when in fact, they were losing sessions. The videos are right there on YouTube and anyone that wants to spend the time to go through them can confirm the objective proof published by Rounderlife.
How would you accurately determine how much Postle won or lost? You would watch the YouTube videos and evaluate the amount of money Postle bet, then deduct it from the pots he won. This would provide his actual win/loss rate. Other than Rounderlife, not one internet outlet took the time to evaluate and compute the real Postle win rates.
In the middle of all of this, the “poker community” celebrates Veronica Brill for being the whistle blower and the hero of the story. For the record this story was entirely built on half-truths. Veronica did approach me in March 2019 and she did claim that Mike Postle was cheating. When I asked her if she had any basis for her claim or anything to support it, Veronica had nothing but her suspicion. Still she demanded that I pull Postle from the game right away. To be clear, Brill provided me with no numbers, no video of suspected hands, no charts and no evidence/facts whatsoever. She has since apparently claimed that she provided me with a collection of videos showing weird plays but that is false as well. Brill only presented to me her “belief” that Postle was cheating.
I told Veronica that I thought she was wrong but I also told her if she really thought Mike was doing something underhanded, she should stop inviting him to her “Veronica and Friends” game. That was her game. She decided who to invite (or not invite), not me, not anyone else at Stones. So what did Veronica do? The very next month, Veronica texted her player list to me for her game and Mike Postle was on it. In fact, Veronica continued to invite Postle on every list that she sent me after that conversation. If Veronica thought Postle was cheating, why did she invite him to all of her games?
In any event, the fact that Veronica invited Postle to her game shortly after she made her comments to me seemed to confirm that this was just “Veronica being Veronica.” You see, Veronica has this penchant for making outrageous statements and frivolous claims about people. The irony is she has done this in the past to some of her co-plaintiffs in this lawsuit, who now publicly claim to be her friends. She would often make these claims to me and after a while, it became a lot like “the boy who cried wolf.”
For those of you who think Veronica is a hero, do you think she told the other people she invited to the games that she thought Postle was cheating? What kind of hero invites her other friends to a game with someone she suspected of cheating?
In the last year I have seen a community that I considered family turn against me. Those close to me know that I would never stand for or be involved in anything close to what I was accused of. Many of the people that joined the lawsuit and spoke out against me were people that I once called friends. Some of them, I even considered family. I cared about these people, I put a lot of effort into creating events/programs for them and I cared deeply about my work and my integrity. I took it all very seriously. I put everything I had into it. I loved making my poker people happy.
Turns out this “community” did not care about right or wrong, fairness or a critical review of the actual facts. It was a rush to judgment with the twitter mob interested in saying outrageous things and jumping to unwarranted conclusions, all in an effort to get followers, clicks and likes. It is all ego driven. Even the ones that could have spoken out and knew this whole thing was all bullshit were silenced by their sponsors.
On another note, I am just so sad that so many of you soiled Kevin Racks’ name to further the hate and incite the Twitter mob. Kevin was an incredible person. I had the privilege of knowing him and becoming friends with him at the end of his life. Kevin should be remembered for all of the goodness within him and as a bright light in the poker community. The fact that he has been tied to this situation in such a manipulative and
cynical way makes his loss that much more painful.
Lastly I want to publicly thank Rudy Robledo, Kirk Rexford and the countless local Sacramento poker players who had my back and circulated a petition to bring me back to Stones. This of course was never tweeted about or reported by PokerNews but by the time it happened, I was used to anything positive about me being ignored. It is in times like these that you find out who your real friends are and their character is revealed. I found out that I don’t have nearly as many friends as I thought I did, but the ones that I do have are really incredible.
The Twitter mob is real, it is ugly, and it has real life consequences. I have never before experienced so much hatred, ignorance and even threats of violence. All this just because of one person on Twitter and the mob of people who were willing to believe her without facts. It is pretty surreal to think about in retrospect. These social media influencers need to be held accountable for what they say against people and especially if they are accusing someone of illegal activity without evidence. Social media provided them with a platform to hide behind a computer while hurling false accusations at me.
Right or wrong doesn’t seem to matter to them. It is the person with the loudest platform and the most followers that will get heard and ultimately believed and that is a dark commentary on the poker community that must be reconciled for the good of its own future.
Sincerely
Justin Kuraitis
I'll get to commenting on this shortly.
Remember this Tweet from September 29, 2019?
https://twitter.com/StonesLivePoker/...72709144645632
"Earlier this year an accusation was made that a player was cheating in our game. We conducted a full investigation & found no evidence that any cheating had occurred. Stones Live stream remains a secure poker streaming platform. The recent allegations are completely fabricated."
Since Justin is "innocent", certainly he can describe to us what he did to investigate the situation in March 2019 when Veronica brought it to him, as well as what he did to monitor Mike for the next 6 months while he played on stream.
We never got an answer to this.
Here's a Sacramento Bee article about the lawsuit and subsequent settlement. Postle comments in the article in arrogant fashion.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article245724175.html
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Postle
This makes it sound like it bamboozled this Dave Broome guy (a documentary maker), and there is an idiotic pro-Postle documentary in the works. Lovely.
Also, here's the statement by Mac, as required by the lawsuit settlement:
I like Mac, and I understand that you have to make statements like these when lawsuits are settled, but I feel this goes too far to exonerate them. I had initially been told that it would be a generic statement that there was "no evidence found" of them being involved in the cheating, and that would be that. Unfortunately, the statement really does read like an exoneration -- saying that Mac and his co-counsel are "satisfied" that Stones and Kuraitis weren't involved, and that they were very cooperative. I doubt they were actually cooperative (they certainly weren't with the rest of the poker community), and I don't believe Kuraitis is exonerated by any of this. He either knew or should have known.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac Verstandig
I know that Stones probably demanded a statement like this, and wouldn't settle without it. Ultimately it was the clients having to sign off on it. However, I wish the statement weren't so detailed and strong in its insistence that Justin did nothing wrong.
To be fair, it is my opinion that Stones upper management did NOT know about any of this, until after the scandal broke. However, I believe they honestly think at this point that there was no cheating, and that all allegations were false.
Justin is going hard at everyone right nowe, but conveniently he's ignoring my tough question about what he did to investigate in March (and what he did to monitor Mike going forward).
Here are his other tweets so far today:
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...15879108964353
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...13545209475072
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...17130953506817
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...18517351313413
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...19053781852160
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...20929336188928
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...21228733992960
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...19970023407618
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...22297962942464
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...23303245193216
Justin's statement is garbage.
It's not a short statement, yet it spends a long time bashing Veronica, claims that a half-hearted investigation by CA Gaming exonerates him, and cries about how the poker community betrayed him.
You know what it doesn't contain? Any explanation of how he investigated the accusations in March 2019, or what he did to watch Postle after that. Remember, Postle played on stream for 6 months after Veronica's accusation, and is accused of continuing to cheat during that time.
That is what we want to hear. Instead, this is a self-pity party, which reads like it was written by an emotional woman who can't believe her best friend slept with her boyfriend.
Justin getting killed in the responses on Twitter, as you'd expect.
He's totally avoiding my question, too, even though he's answering other (much easier) ones, and has clearly seen what I've asked. I've repeated it to where I've asked three times now.
LOL
I doubt he will answer me because it's the one question he can't answer without looking super guilty.
I'll be sure to put the Mike Postle movie on the shelf right next to the Mike Matusow movie, just as soon as it comes out.
https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...sow-Movie-Star
I would love to know Justin's opinion on cases like OJ simpson & Casey Anthony.
Clearly he thinks both are 100% innocent right?
There’s not much to add, Druff really covered this well. I guess it’s just some more gasoline to add to the dumpster fire that is 2020. Mac was def not standing when he signed that statement regarding JFK. He was bent over and grabbing his ankles. At least to a layman (me) it looks that way.
It looks like he may of bit off more than he could chew on this. Do I know for a fact that a more specialized and/or local lawyer could of negotiated better terms and certainly a more reasonable statement? No, but I would bet that way if I had to.
Even if the California laws are diseased when it comes to these matters, if a clearly negligent entity and employee can get off this easy the justice system is a fucking joke.
Looking forward to Postle’s Mockumentary. I hope it’s like the Blair Witch Project, and all the Postle Propagandists get lost in the woods.
Am I remembering correctly that Justin was floor for the live stream more often than anyone else, or was there another guy?
Quote:
Originally Posted by duped_samaritan
I believe he was officially the “Tournament Director” for Stones. Effectively, he was the Executive Producer for the livestream “Stones Live”. It may have not been his title, but from all reports he was the one in charge of the stream. He was in the back with a tech guy and had access to the feed in real time. He was there for most of the sessions in question, but was in Las Vegas during the World Series. When Justin wasn’t there, Postle seemed to appear less on the stream with much worse results.
So a few things here.
First off, Kuraitis kept avoiding my question, despite my posting it in several threads he stated, and then finally ran away from Twitter after the community was killing him in the responses.
This was his last attempt to say something:
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...89495352078343
He did try to answer Bart with a laughable regurgitation of Rounderlife crap:
https://twitter.com/BartHanson/statu...90714678407168
https://twitter.com/BartHanson/statu...94408211869697
Finally, he just gave up, and "peace outted" it with an obnoxious Spiderman GIF:
https://twitter.com/bparispoker/stat...40032546287618
So... his attempt to do a victory lap and be accepted back into the poker community was a huge flop. The moron really thought that the statement by Mac had exonerated him, so he typed up his arrogant statement, posted it, and really thought that everyone would welcome him back with open arms. The opposite happened, and he ran away.
I suspect he might be the one operating the "Poker Heroes" account, though, or at least might be sharing it with Postle and the other trolls.
Anyway, suffice to say that Justin Kuraitis has likely given up being accepted back into poker's good graces, and we probably won't hear from him until....
(see next post)
There's another chapter about this saga about to take place. Khou Fang (the woman behind the poker_grandma and "Poker Thug" Twitter accounts) kept posting about 2 weeks ago about "September 28", and how it's going to be some kind of day of reckoning for those who opposed Postle.
At first I had wondered if she was talking about some idiotic and frivolous libel/slander lawsuit. However, the date made no sense. If a lawsuit was being filed, it would be unlikely that they'd have the exact date later in the month it would be filed. That's not how things like that work. My guess at the time was that they were going to release something which either bashed their main opponents (Veronica, Doug Polk, Joey Ingram, etc) or was a detailed defense of Postle.
The latter looks like it is probably the case.
Recall Postle's recent statement in the Sac Bee. He talked about the documentary about the situation being produced by a game named Dave Broome, who is @broome88 on Twitter.
I am not familiar with Mr. Broome or his work, but it does appear he is a legit documentary maker, and it doesn't appear he has much (or any) association with poker. So what gives? Who would make a documentary about this?
Awhile back Mr. Broome attempted to contact Veronica for comment, but he made no attempt (to my knowledge) to contact anyone else in poker. Additionally, it seems that both Postle and Kuraitis are very excited to see this released.
It is my belief that Stones is funding all or part of this documentary, as part of some kind of image rehabilitation.
I do not have any kind of concrete evidence regarding this, but I think there's a good chance this is true. Given that Broome appears to have no association with poker, it's unlikely that he decided to do this on his own, as nobody cared about this story outside poker, nor does it really make very good documentary material. This is no "Tiger King", for sure.
Broome's company, 25/7 Productions, claims to have existed since 2003, and claims to have 25 employees.
It is based in Burbank, CA (kind of a "second Hollywood", also in the Los Angeles area), and not Sacramento, which is almost 400 miles away.
I find it unlikely that Broome decided on his own to self-fund a Postle documentary. I believe that Stones probably paid for this, possibly recommended by a crisis management team which they may have hired.
I asked Broome about this on Twitter, and mostly got a non-answer.
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...26857625645056
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...41153818554368
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...51565519728642
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...57713484488704
I find it very unlikely that this will be a neutral documentary. If Stones (or a company they hired) paid anything for this (or paid for the whole thing), there's zero point zero chance it will cover the situation fairly.
And without getting into the specifics here, I will say that biased documentaries are sometimes a tactic used by crisis management teams to combat bad press.
Here's how it works:
Company A gets some sort of bad press over some kind of accused (and true) wrongdoing.
Company A is worried that this will noticeably impact business, so they hire Crisis Management Firm B to help rehabilitate their rep. In turn, Crisis Management Firm B has a relationship with Documentary Production Company C, and C is their go-to company to produce reliably biased documentaries in order to counter bad press. So B tells Company A, "Trust us. Hire C to make your documentary, and they will make it very favorable for you, while feigning objectivity, and this will counter the bad press."
This isn't too different from an online search reputation firm, which you can pay to generate hundreds of phony positive search results in order to clog up Google results of any search on your name (or company).
A little related.
Kasey Mills, who was a Stones commentator and sometimes-player in the Postle games, was the 61st plaintiff to accept the deal, after being on the fence.
Unfortunately, she has COVID-19, and is now experiencing mid-level symptoms, including breathing problems. I hope she ends up okay.
https://twitter.com/pokermommaa/stat...43246524821504
Recall a few posts ago I expressed concern that Mac's statement exonerating Stones and Kuraitis went too far. While I understand why it happened (Stones demanded it for the settlement), I was concerned it would be used by Stones/Kuraitis to throw in everyone's faces for eternity.
I was especially worried because the statement was considered "unusual" (even in the words of the Sac Bee) for the opposing counsel to make such a positive statement for the other side, even in settlement.
Indeed, my fears have come true. First Kuraitis bragged out it in his statement, and now Stones:
https://twitter.com/TenEightSuited/s...92427304824832
https://twitter.com/Erica_Sumner/sta...03098975145987
https://twitter.com/StonesGambling/s...68071385247744
Ugh.
When information of the settlement was leaked to me, it was said that Stones wanted a statement completely exonerating them and Kuraitis, but Mac refused, and only agreed to state that there was "no evidence" linking them to the cheating.
However, the statement actually given reads more like an exoneration.
Notice that the Stones account is actually bragging about how unusual the statement is from opposing counsel: "Have you ever seen a statement like the opposing counsel's before? Neither have we." Ugh.
Not surprisingly, there has been some backlash against Mac in the poker community (and keep in mind he rarely gets hate except from the Postle crew), and he has gone silent on Twitter since September 14.
Since Stones is being so chatty, I hit them with the same question I kept asking Kuraitis:
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...09327529050112
Looks like Justin hasn't peace-outed from Twitter, after all:
https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/sta...19299600105472
LOL
Kuraitis is finally answering me with non-answers.
Here was his first response:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EiILysGW...jpg&name=large
Then this...
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...20474974240771
Basically he's giving everyone the middle finger until the hyper-biased documentary comes out.
Recall Postle's recent statement in the Sac Bee. He talked about the documentary about the situation being produced by a game named Dave Broome, who is @broome88 on Twitter.
I am not familiar with Mr. Broome or his work, but it does appear he is a legit documentary maker, and it doesn't appear he has much (or any) association with poker. So what gives? Who would make a documentary about this?
Awhile back Mr. Broome attempted to contact Veronica for comment, but he made no attempt (to my knowledge) to contact anyone else in poker. Additionally, it seems that both Postle and Kuraitis are very excited to see this released.
It is my belief that Stones is funding all or part of this documentary, as part of some kind of image rehabilitation.
I do not have any kind of concrete evidence regarding this, but I think there's a good chance this is true. Given that Broome appears to have no association with poker, it's unlikely that he decided to do this on his own, as nobody cared about this story outside poker, nor does it really make very good documentary material. This is no "Tiger King", for sure.
Broome's company, 25/7 Productions, claims to have existed since 2003, and claims to have 25 employees.
It is based in Burbank, CA (kind of a "second Hollywood", also in the Los Angeles area), and not Sacramento, which is almost 400 miles away.
I find it unlikely that Broome decided on his own to self-fund a Postle documentary. I believe that Stones probably paid for this, possibly recommended by a crisis management team which they may have hired.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this is a legit documentary (as compared, maybe, to an informercial) wouldn't it show up on Broome's IMBD page? Because it doesn't. Also, maybe there's a connection with and funding by the old guy behind Rounders Life? He seems to be emotionally committed to this story.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1545599/
If you want a good laugh, look at this:
https://justinkuraitis791087716.wordpress.com/
Another good laugh
https://twitter.com/shaundeeb/status...36961767862275
It is a little strange that Joey Ingram is staying silent on the matter so far.
I don't think it would be to far fetched to say that maybe he was advised by attorney to say nothing for now, as he could face slander/libel lawsuits since JK and MP were found "innocent"?
Joeys too busy fluffing Doug for his heads up match.
It is very strange. I wonder if he's gotten some kind of legal threats behind the scenes, or if he's heard rumors that he might be sued. Doug Polk isn't silent, and you'd think Ingram would have told Polk if he had been legally threatened.Quote:
Originally Posted by AhoosierA
I will say that Stones/Postle/Kuraitis was not found innocent. The civil lawsuit against Postle was dismissed, and the civil lawsuit against Stones/Kuraitis was settled and the plaintiff's attorney gave a statement as a condition for the settlement.
None of this could be used in a libel/sander lawsuit. Nothing has been established in court (either way) regarding whether or not Postle or Stones/Kuraitis did anything wrong.
A libel/slander suit would get dismissed quickly through an anti-SLAPP motion. This is especially true because Mike Postle and Justin Kuraitis could be considered "limited purpose public figures" in poker, and thus the standard for libel/slander is much higher.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AhoosierA
I will say this from watching Joey a decent amount, he ebbs and flows to the extreme with the content. It seems to be part of his personality. He will have spurts where he is doing 3 or 4 podcasts in a week and then will kind of go off the radar for a while. The Postle coverage being a prime example. He was doing 5 hours a day for weeks straight and then he burned out.
It is weird that he hasn’t said or tweeted a thing regarding Postle from what I’ve seen. Maybe it’s a combination of just not being motivated to do much right now and possibly some legal advice. However, it’s always possible he just is not motivated right now and something else is going on. I guess we will see.
Great coverage Druff.
So Pokernews (specifically Chad Holloway) has released the details on the settlement. Recall that prior to today, I was the only one who was leaking details of the settlement, but I stopped short from stating how much the amount was, only calling it "nominal" -- a term also recently used by Stones.
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2020/...ment-37983.htm
Holloway revealed today that the amount was $40,000 to be shared by all plaintiffs, which he calculated to be $645 per plaintiff, given that 62 plaintiffs supposedly settled. My paperwork shows 61 settled, but perhaps someone else joined who had previously declined. Whatever. This money does NOT include Mac's fee, which was agreed by clients at the beginning to be a certain percentage of any money won/recovered. I am guessing that Mac is getting about 35-40% of that, but keep in mind this is a pure guess. It is unlikely to be more than 50% or less than 25%, however.
Assuming a 35% attorney's fee, each settling plaintiff would get about $420.
Now you see why I called it "nominal", but "not like $20, or anything like that".
I was aware of this $40k amount since it was leaked to me, but I wasn't sure at the time if this included Mac's fees (it does), and I wasn't sure if it would be reduced if fewer plaintiffs than all 88 accepted (it wasn't).
In June, most of the case against Stones was dismissed, but an amended complaint was filed, which asked for the rake, which was permissible by CA law, and not covered by the dismissal. Thus, the total amount recovered ($40,000) was more than the total rake paid in the game (calculated to be slightly less than $30,000).
Thus, monetarily, Mac did well for the plaintiffs, given the restrictions of CA law. However, there are criticisms being levied upon Mac on Twitter about the whole thing, both fair and unfair.
Among these criticisms:
- Mac didn't get the plaintiffs enough money (not a valid criticim)
- Mac left the other 26 plaintiffs twisting in the wind, and harmed their case going forward by making the statement he did. (Valid criticism, but these plaintiffs aren't likely to continue with the case anyway, so it won't end up mattering.)
- Mac's statement about Stones/Kuraitis went too far, and will be used to taunt the poker community and mislead people for years to come (which is already happening, and is my biggest issue with Mac here.)
Shaun Deeb, who has actively involved himself in the situation this week involving Kuraitis' reappearance, took aim at Mac today:
https://twitter.com/mac_verstandig/s...95897398685696
https://twitter.com/shaundeeb/status...96344024858624
https://twitter.com/shaundeeb/status...97620594937857
https://twitter.com/shaundeeb/status...96637357801472
So while Shaun definitely understand the way the law and the court system works, it's interesting how Deeb is stating that he would have "happily paid for the clients not to take that deal". I'm not sure if Shaun would have really done that, but keep in mind he offered $100k earlier this week to Postle if he names his accomplices. Shaun does bring up a fair point that it kind of sucks that Stones has this BS statement of pseudo-exoneration, and only had to pay out $40k to get it. Mac did give a fair response, that he only represents his clients, and not the interests of the poker community, which is true.
However, a more interesting (but largely ignored) accusation came from Jake Rosenstiel, one of the 26 clients who did NOT take the settlement:
https://twitter.com/TheJake427/statu...03542297669633
https://twitter.com/TheJake427/statu...08178832375808
:what
Keep in mind that this is only an accusation by a disgruntled client, and it occurs all the time that clients are angry at their attorneys for less-than-desired case results. It also occurs at times that the clients misunderstand what attorneys can and can't do, and unfairly blame the attorney for situations beyond their control. However, Jake is alleging something which is indeed unethical if true, but as I said, we don't have evidence regarding this either way.
Also, I'm not sure what Jake means by "enough signatures". The only metric for "enough signatures" was 65, as stipulated by Stones. However, they never reached 65, and the deal got done anyway, so I'm not sure what Jake is talking about here.
Justin is to the point of simply trolling the community now, responding with a screen shot of Mac's statement whenever anyone asks him a question.
He even made that his profile pic.
He also posted this:
https://twitter.com/JFKPokerTD/statu...24727680864265
Just straight up trolling at this point, as he realizes his rep is toast, so he figures he might as well just aggravate people. I imagine that he won't be showing his face in poker rooms any time soon.