German "reporter" shows up on 2+2, claims that Run It Once Poker scammed a woman over 70
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pfote88
Hiya,
My name is Laura and I’ve been tasked to gather information for a German media outlet that is working on a segment concerning Run It Once Poker.
It revolves around the poker site creating an account for a retired widow and withdrawing several thousand dollars from her bank over a few months.
This forum comes up several times in online searches for Run It Once Poker and my hope is to find a former employee of theirs or another poker site who could tell me if there are any safeguards in place to identify atypical accounts or transactions.
Would the account creation for someone in the above demographic typically cause any red flags to go up?
How thorough is the verification process in actuality aside from requesting copies of ID documents? Is it just a matter of being able to check off the receipt of documents or does someone carefully look over documents, account information and account behavior to try and identify potential fraud?
Does an account for someone over a certain age attract additional scrutiny, in this case someone over the age of 70?
I have found several underage account topics and examples and that is of course due to legal and regulatory concerns, but nothing about other unusual accounts.
The site has been asked to provide information about their player demographic and answer more specific questions, but has not done so.
If you have any first hand experience as an employee or are someone that has been in this field for a certain time and have relevant insights, I would love to hear from you. Please email me at:
infolaurag1@protonmail.com
Source: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...poker-1775169/
Phil Galfond responded with the following:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Galfond
Hi Laura,
I’m the founder of Run It Once Poker. Our Managing Director (who is also responsible for fraud detection) will reach out to you at the email address you shared, but I wanted to respond to a couple of things myself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pfote88
It revolves around the poker site creating an account for a retired widow and withdrawing several thousand dollars from her bank over a few months.
This sounds like you’re alleging that we created the account ourselves and deposited into it with stolen credit card information. It’s unclear if you meant it this way, because you go on to ask questions about our account verification and fraud detection processes, so I just want to make clear for those reading (this will show up on google searches like yours!) that what you’re investigating is whether or not this woman was a victim of credit card fraud by a third party rather than theft by us, correct? I’d appreciate it if you’d clarify that.
I’ve spoken with our team. Nothing about this account’s activity followed any fraud patterns. If someone besides this woman was playing, please explain to her that it was almost surely someone close to her, and that she needs to contact the police because her card is being used fraudulently. Our team already explained this but she seemed to ignore it. Perhaps she will listen to you.
The person in control of the account apparently intended to continue using the card - a payout attempt was even made to the card. If this wasn’t her, please make her aware that her personal information can still be used fraudulently (outside of Run It Once) even if the card is blocked.
I hope you’re able to figure out what happened.
Take care,
Phil
Anyway, you can click on the link above to see the thread. Pfote88 responded one more time.
This clearly isn't a reporter. The 70+-year-old woman never knew she had a RIO account, nor was she the OP. I can't be sure of either of these claims, but I would be shocked if either of these were the case.
As has already been pointed out on 2+2, it's highly likely that a degenerate child or grandchild of this woman got a hold of her ID and banking/credit card info, played under name, and lost thousands.
Clearly the Run It Once staff didn't do any of this. That's an outlandish accusation.
I have a feeling that the guilty party told their mom/grandma that Run It Once likely did it, in order to hide their own culpability. That's why they didn't go to law enforcement -- they didn't want the truth discovered!
The thread is an attempt to shame Galfond and RIO into refunding the money, even though they weren't at fault.
It is fairly likely that Pfote88 was actually the player in question. It is possible, however, that it's another relative who was duped by the guilty party to pursue this route.
However, this also might be a teachable moment for RIO and other poker sites out there. While people over 70 do play online poker, it is highly infrequent. There really should be extra scrutiny placed upon accounts supposedly created by senior citizens. This is especially true because senior citizens are the most frequent fraud victims -- both by strangers and those close to them.
I'm 48 years old, and am consistently the oldest one at the online poker table. This might have changed a bit since corona shut down the live poker scene, but you're still not seeing many 70-year-old players playing online -- especially not for medium or large stakes.
Galfond should have the system flag accounts of people over 65 for additional verification. However, he did nothing wrong here, and his site is not to blame.
