PP Poker: Individuals running "clubs" on an app where they hold all the money -- what could go wrong? (Adnan Mohammad scam)
PP Poker is an app which has been growing in popularity in 2018 (and now 2019).
Here's the website for it: http://www.pppoker.net
How does it work?
In short, people start "clubs" on there, which act as virtual private games. The owner of each "club" handles the money deposited/withdrawn from the game, and it's basically a way to play online poker in the US, even if you don't want to deal with ACR/Bovada/whatever.
The manager of the PPP club pays some sort of monthly fee to PPP, and then there's some split of the rake collected (not sure of the exact split percentages).
This is totally illegal in the US, and people could go to prison if caught running a PPP club for real money, but it's no riskier than running an illegal brick-and-mortar home game.
Would I ever consider running one? Fuck no.
Of course, the big flaw is that the money is being held/handled by a third party you can't necessarily trust. And there's been a number of stories thus far of people being ripped off by managers of PPP clubs.
According to a thread on 2+2, a pretty big ripoff has occurred on one of the PPP clubs.
Adnan Mohammad, aka "NYPokerKing", a trustworthy-sounding screen name if I ever heard one, is accused of stealing over $100,000 from players on his PPP club.
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/pict...n+Mohammad.jpg
His club's gimmicky website can be found at http://pokerclub.ag
The evidence in the 2+2 thread suggests that Adnan basically ran a ponzi scheme, pocketing all of the money on deposit, and then using new deposits to pay requested cashouts. Reportedly he would pay the most active rakers at the moment, figuring that they were the ones he wanted to keep most happy. However, even they were paid in a trickle. One person on 2+2 reported that it took 10 payouts just to get paid $3000!
Two people were chronicled in the thread to have lost over $40k and $20k, respectively.
Others chimed in, and apparently Adnan looks like he's not paying anyone unless new deposits come in, and then he forwards those to existing players, based upon their current rake generating activity.
Adnan Mohammad is a fine gentleman who was convicted of grand larceny in 2013, but I'm sure it was all just a huge misunderstanding, and he's a salt-of-the-earth character.
The writing was on the wall regarding Adnan Mohammad and his PPP club, as there was already a thread calling him out in April 2018. Why anyone continued to play there or trust this guy is beyond me.
There was another PPP scandal based out of Houston last year, and I've heard of plenty of others.
Best to stay off that entire app.
In fact, even if your PPP club is being managed by someone solvent and trustworthy, there's still the matters of game security, which basically you have no reason at all to trust.
