Thomas Kremser stealing EPT side event player's money
In this interview (in Finnish) with seasoned poker reporter Juhani Tyrisevä, he brings up the topic of Thomas Kremser. The interview is published on Pokerisivut which is Finland's biggest poker community, and for whom Tyrisevä has reported from live events for since 2006. For those of you that don't remember, Thomas Kremser was accused of pocketing money from EPT side event's after players noticed four buyins had gone missing in a 5k euro side event in EPT Madrid 2011.
Nothing ever came to light of this story. Investigative journalism is an unheard of in mainstream poker media.
I took the time to translate the part about Kremser in the interview:
Any other unforgettable events you have witnessed?
[Paragraph about the 2010 EPT Berlin robbery]
"Springing to mind is also a gig at EPT Madrid, when Pokerstars sacked tournament director Thomas Kremser. Stars had for some unfathomable reason made a seven year long deal with Kremser for the arrangement of EPT tournaments. At the time, his seventh year was underway, and in Stars' mind they were paying Kremser way too much. They wanted to negotiate a, for them, better contract, alternatively discontinue it. Kremser then got caught for a considerable swindle, and his career with the EPT ended then and there. Nobody knows for sure, was the decision to end the contract made before the theft was revealed, but the incident itself was clear cut. The case was discovered thanks to Juha Helppi. Helppi was one of three remaining players in a 5000 euro side event that was about to go on break for the day. The players were discussing a deal between them, when Helppi noticed, there were 80,000 chips more in play than there should be according to the number of entrants listed on the tournament info screen. It was undeniably clear that four players buyins had been embezzled from the prize pool. Pokerstars restored the 20,000 euro to the prize pool, but it is unknown, did that money come from Kremser or the company's own pockets.
Kremser with wife, and a gentleman named Gerard manually, between the three of them, handled all EPT cash transactions for seven years, until Pokerstars developed a computerised system for it. My careful estimate is that Kremser and his collaborators have stolen hundreds of thousands euros along the way. I have no evidence, but by Kremser and company's methods it was in my opinion easy to embezzle money from specifically large field side events. In these events it was more difficult to keep track of the actual numbers of entrants. In the main events Mad Harper ran such a tight ship that Kremser never had the chance to cabal. Harper made the players list herself and always debriefed the floor to make sure everything was ran to precision. To Kremser and his companions, skimming off the top in side events that no one was watching over was much less riskful. At that time all buyins were made cash in hand, so the process in question is no more difficult than handing the chips to the player and putting this buyin in your own pockets."
The tournament where Kremser finally was caught had only 123 player. Thus four buyins missing should be easily noticed.
"The more players, the less the risk of getting caught. In that last tournament there were, besides few players, also big money in question, and so Kremser finally got busted. This is just speculation, but I believe that from the EPT's thousand and two thousand euro side events, hundreds of thousands of euros have gone missing along the way. Nobody can of course know for sure, other than Kremser and his partners in crime. Maybe it is somewhat telling that Kremser had the peculiar hobby of collecting sports cars."
