Poker scammer Eric Conti convicted of child molestation

Meet Eric Conti.

http://www.pokerolymp.com/assets/Upl...cles/42340.jpg

Eric was accused (and likely guilty) of scamming in 2011, where he sold over $45k in WSOP action, then made off with almost all of the money. He played a single event -- the $2500 8-game, and cashed about $5700. He ran off with that money and the rest of the nearly $43k in stakes he had collected for other events.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...ammer-1025479/

In 2009, he adopted two 10-year-old twin boys. The boys belonged to a "family friend" who lost them, and Eric volunteered to take custody of them and adopt them.

In 2014, he was accused of molesting them between 2011 and 2014. He was convicted in November 2016 and sentenced in December to two eight-year concurrent sentences.

Unfortunately, this means he will likely be released in 2022.

Here is the 2014 article from wesh.com about the accusation:

http://www.wesh.com/article/brevard-...-years/4434895

"According to the arrest report, Conti would repeatedly touch the boys inappropriately, in front of one another, and make them touch him."

What a fucking sicko.

Apparently the police established an ironclad case against him through a "controlled phone call". These calls take place where law enforcement has the victim or cooperating witness call the accused in their presence, and try to say things to get them to admit what they were doing. In this case, the boys called Conti and begged him to stop molesting them. It is not clear what Conti said in response, but it was enough to give the prosecution a very strong case.

Not sure why he only got eight year concurrent sentences. It boggles my mind that someone could molest two boys like that, repeatedly, and get a relatively light sentence.

Disgusting. What is worse is that I imagine the money he scammed helped provide a financially stable-enough environment for him to prove to someone that he was an alright person to give two young boys to.

I'm not at all for the government taking away peoples' kids and putting them in foster care - that should be a last resort - but I feel like the whole dumping them off on the closest family member or family friends tends to lead to a much less stringent examination of the future guardian's background and environment.

I hope someone gets a crack at this guy before he ends up in the SHU/ad seg.

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Originally Posted by GringoStar

Disgusting. What is worse is that I imagine the money he scammed helped provide a financially stable-enough environment for him to prove to someone that he was an alright person to give two young boys to.

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Actually it looks like he already had the kids and used them to gain trust from investors.

From the OP of 4 thread.

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Hi everyone, my name is Eric Conti. I am 34 years old and have 4 boys including 12 year old twins I adopted 2 years ago. I have been playing professionally online for about 5 years now. I am currently backed online by SS-TP on twoplustwo (Sure-Shot-TP on stars, Jennnyy19 on FTP), and am part of a large group of players who attend weekly skype sessions with some of the games top mid/high stakes tourney pros. This arrangement has been in place for over 18 months now.

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I'm still unclear as to whether this kind of activity by Conti against his stakers constitutes criminal fraud or is simply a breach of contract civil matter. If it is criminal, is there any history of law enforcement agreeing to get involved in staking scams, anywhere? At any rate, the sexual molestation charges kind of make any financial indiscretions almost irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by The Judge Who Put Him Away

Later fag.

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In court, rocking the Garrett-style vest.

Later fag

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Originally Posted by JohnCommode

I'm still unclear as to whether this kind of activity by Conti against his stakers constitutes criminal fraud or is simply a breach of contract civil matter. If it is criminal, is there any history of law enforcement agreeing to get involved in staking scams, anywhere? At any rate, the sexual molestation charges kind of make any financial indiscretions almost irrelevant.

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I would think that the stake scam constitutes fraud, because he played a single event and ran off with the rest of the money. Breach of contract civilly would more be something like Conti showing up to the tournaments super drunk every time and donking off all of his chips. Another breach of contract might be Conti deciding to not play the events he promised, but instead using the money to enter other events which were never agreed upon. Simply stealing the money is fraud, though.

However, I have never seen anyone arrested for stealing stake money, as law enforcement tends to not take seriously scams between gamblers. They should, but they don't.