Jami Lafay Daniels asking for $50k via gofundme due to cancer surgery, but a lot doesn't add up

[Dan Druff]

In case you're not familiar, in the past two months Jami Lafay (real name Jami Daniels) has caused drama at a poker room by yelling out loud that a player smells bad, then she drove a fellow Native American female poker player off social media after allegedly harassing her at the poker table, and capped it all off with a fake suicide scare, where in reality she was just traveling from LA to San Francisco.

I know this is going to shock you guys, but now Jami is posting "cancer surgery" pics and asking for $50k on gofundme.

Yeah, absolutely nobody in the world saw this coming. I'm as floored as you are.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/LafayJami/status/1627036567239020547


Here is the gofuckme that her "sister" set up:

Welcome: Thank you for listening to Jami's story. Those of you who know Jami Lafay know that she has an incredible gift for bringing laughter and joy to any room. Long story short: Jami has run into terrible, terrible luck - if you could spare just a buyin or two for your main game (or even just a few big blinds!), it would make a world of difference.

What happened? Earlier this year, Jami was diagnosed with "metastatic papillary thyroid carcinoma" on the left side of her neck and a "pleomorphic adenoma" on the right side of her neck. This was going to require hours and hours of very risky surgery, as the growths pressed against a major artery in the neck and several nerves that impact the ability for her face to function.

These masses in her neck have been causing her severe pain for months, and needed surgery immediately despite the risks to her life and ability to function.

She did all the “right” things…eating well, sleeping well, exercising, going to doctor appointments and health screenings, and managing her stress. And yet, life is unfair and CANCER SUCKS!

What's the latest status? The first operation lasted about 10 hours and initially went well, wrapping up around 6PM. Unfortunately later that night, there were complications with swelling that happen about 10% of the time, and she needed an additional urgent operation at 11 PM that night that went until 2AM.



Since then, she's also had adverse reactions to most of the medications typically used for pain - which as you can imagine, has been insanely intense. Can you imagine recovering from getting your body cut up and not being able to use pain killers as they're intended? Jami has barely been able to sleep or function.

She's been so strong throughout and luckily she's doing better now, but it sounds like recovery (from just this surgery) is going to take another ~3 months or so - and there's still another surgery that's still to come.



What can you do? Even the smallest donations will make a world of difference. You can donate here or via crypto to this BTC address: bc1qtvzaxmzp34zwdkyzhkzaxusse0f2x0d3qeca07.

Jami has the kindest heart out of anyone I know, and now she needs our help and support. Your generous donations will help with the following expenses:

Medical expenses not covered by insurance
Travel expenses to the cancer center and hospitals
Loss of income due to inability to work
Medications

Thank you so so much for your donations, prayers, well wishes, support, and positive thoughts as we join together to support Jami and her family!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/pf3xn-hel...bad-imaginable


This was supposedly started by "Julie Daniels" (Daniels is Jami's real last name), but oddly at the bottom it says it was organized by "Julie and Daniel". What? So it was co-organized by Daniel Daniels?

Notice the part which says, "if you could spare just a buyin or two for your main game (or even just a few big blinds!), it would make a world of difference". As far as we can tell, her sister Julie doesn't play poker. Would a non-poker player really suggest that people spare "a few big blinds"? Also, the title of the gofundme mentions "the worst run-bad imaginable" -- again, a poker term by a supposed non poker player.

And why is this entirely aimed at the poker community? Why isn't this gofundme also aimed at her friends and family outside of poker?

Oh, and she wants to play the WSOP Main before she dies. Just to let you know that.



https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1627084954525126657


Obviously very sketchy.

Oh... and look at this:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/PokerCookieM/status/1627074307083112449

... and this:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/hoewithacamera/status/1627329781762072577


So apparently she's been asking for money due to "cancer" all the way back 2017, at one point claiming to have beaten stage 4 cancer (???) with a dietary change??


Oh, and she needs the $50k despite not having seen a medical bill yet from her recent hospital stay. And apparently she needs money to gamble with when she gets out?

Yeah... not shady at all.

[Dan Druff]

Luke Vrabel, aka Slaydog, is taking a lot of shit for his criticism of Jami. Luke called her out over the fake suicide a few weeks ago, and now he's been calling out the gofundme grift. Many people can't take it, and are accusing him of being heartless, a misogynist, etc.

Not fair. When someone sticks their hand out for $50k to a bunch of strangers, we have a right to question them, especially if they have a recent history of shady behavior.

Here's a video of Luke talking about it:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/slayAbidesDOTL/status/1627458731226136577

[garrett]

hey everybody so what's going on in this thread

[Dan Druff]

The problem with Kat Armsby's point is that it enables scammers to get away with stealing from people, as long as the scammer utters the big "C" word as part of the scheme.

If people ask for money of strangers for ANY REASON, they automatically open themselves up to scrutiny. There is no such thing as a taboo topic. There is no such thing as something you can't question. If you want the hard earned cash of strangers, then you're going to have to answer some questions and justify your story if there are doubts. And if you don't like that, it's very simple: Don't take to social media asking strangers for money.

In general, I don't like any narrative of, "You can't question someone about ______."

Liars and scammers love those taboos, as they exploit them knowing that people will be afraid to pick apart their stories.

[Dan Druff]

Here is Jami's explanation for why her last name "Lafay" isn't the same as her sister Julie Daniels:



https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1627081839088390144




https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1627159910315327489



But wait!

First off, her Facebook URL is facebook.com/jami.daniels.52




Second, here's the People Search entry for Jami from when she lived in Bigform, MT (remember, that's where her boutique was once located):




Notice she is listed as "Jami L Daniels", with the L standing for Lafay.

Lafay is her middle name. Daniels is her last name.

So she's just flat out lying that her sister "Julie Daniels" has a different last name because of having a different father. They have the same last name -- if Julie even exists, which I haven't bothered researching yet.

This is too easy.

[Dan Druff]

Here's her Yelp reviews, ranging from 2012 to 2020. Aside from the one she wrote for her own botique in 2014, let's look at a selection of some of the rest:

https://www.yelp.com/user_details_re...view_sort=time

2/24/2020
Northern Quest Resort & Casino
Airway Heights, WA 99001

1 star

Worst poker room around. The service is horrible. The wait staff is slow and unhappy. The dealers have screwed up more than anyone I've ever seen. They don't opEn tables when they have more than enough people to. The staff is lazy. Good dealers would make a huge difference. The chairs suck. They are so hard on your back. Horrible poker room!
They have a woman named sarina who talked so badly about me behind my back that I will never ever play poker there again. I will play other poker rooms like Black Pearl poker room.

6/30/2019

Rio Hotel & Casino
Las Vegas, NV

1 star

The poker here is so bad. The service is not good and they are very very sexiest to women. I had a situation where this guy was harassing me so I asked for a table change. As I was leaving the table he started in on me more. Instead of dealing with this guy and asking him to stop being confrontational at the table they allowed it. They didn't ask him to stop or leave

7/23/2015

Bigfork Family Practice
Bigfork, MT

1 star

I have cancer in my throat with a sinus cyst. I got a very very painful sinus infection and after three days on the antibiotic with no pain subsiding I called in asking for help.
I have been seeing Michelle for 4 years. No problems as long as I was healthy.
I got into so much pain I called her up crying at 3:30am. She told me to go to the ER.
I went. They told me I had sever sinus infection and to fallow up with Michelle.
When I woke up in the same pain and called Michelle asking for a antibiotic that was stronger she said she had no reason to believe I was in pain. When my son tried to talked to her she said she was calling the cops and hung up on me.

12/8/2012

American Cancer Society
New York, NY

I had a caregiver that was abusing me and so t
Instead of supporting me when I had to ask them to leave they kicked me out during hurricane Sandy. I had to pay an outrageous price for a hotel next door and move all my stuff by myself and the wouldn't even let me use the luggage cart to take the stuff right across the street. I was almost hospitalized from the whole ordeal.
They were not nice, or helpful with anything.
They also never clean the bending and the floors were never cleaned but always covered in hair. The showers had mold growing in them.
Yes it's free but that's I guess what you don't pay for.

Seemingly lots of people abusing and sexually harassing her. Recall that her recent gripe with the Aria was quite similar -- a guy was sexually harassing her, she complained, and SHE got banned for it.

Not sure what the deal is with her cancer, but I see she's had it for at least 10 years (see review above from 2012), and yet here she is looking healthy on poker streams in 2023.

I have no doubt that she has SOME health issue, maybe even some kind of slow moving cancer, but obviously there's a huge part of the story missing here.

[garrett]

Druff if you ever need a 2nd job be a Private eye lol you're pretty good now gotta catch up on thread.

[Small_Banana]

She doesn't have the looks to get money off of the simps so she went the fake cancer route.

[Dan Druff]

She doesn't have the looks to get money off of the simps so she went the fake cancer route.

She looks pretty good for someone who's 43.

And she clearly has some medical condition -- perhaps even cancer. She's posted a lot of very real pictures of herself in the hospital, with what appears to be authentic cuts from surgical incisions.

The problem is that we're not getting the whole story here, and she's lying seemingly on a daily basis. The gofundme seems to have been posted by a fake sister. Her explanation about the difference in last names was 100% a lie, as I already demonstrated. She committed fake suicide last month, and left people twisting in the wind for 24 hours worrying about her. And this cancer, whatever it is, dates back to at least 2012, yet she appears healthy and able-bodied when she goes to play streamed poker.

If she does have cancer, it appears to be slow-moving or non-life-threatening, and is not the urgent matter she portrays. She was asking for cancer-related gofundme donations 6 years ago, also on Twitter, before she was part of the poker community.

The "suicide" and the appeals for money are conveniently following some recent beatdowns on live streams.

She has never once posted a medical bill, or any other proof that these treatments are bankrupting her. In fact, we don't even have proof that she will really spend this money on her hospital bills. For all we know, she will bring it to another high stakes cash game and fire it off.

Given her history, the burden of proof is on her, and we're not seeing any.

[splitthis]

This thread about to get ugly in 321….

[Dan Druff]

My attention was also brought to this Instagram page, which is oddly listed under the name "Monique Matthews-Camby".

Not sure who that's supposed to be, but it's Jami's page. The page itself isn't that exciting. Mostly a bunch of pictures and poker-related stuff. No cancer posts from what I can see. Honestly she looks very healthy in these full body bikini/shower pics for someone with cancer since 2012. But who knows?

There's also a semi-nude if you scroll down far enough, if you're into that sort of thing:

https://www.instagram.com/jameslafay/

[Dan Druff]

Jami is currently e-mailing with me. She opened the e-mail conversation, not me.

I am giving her a chance to explain some of these discrepancies, and if it turns out we misjudged her, I will be happy to both change my view and apologize.

I will not post the content of these e-mails, as they are private. However, if she agrees to let me post any of it publicly, I will share it out here. So far we are only in the beginning stages of discussing this, so there's no point to ask her permission to share anything.

[JeffDime]

I am very sorry that she is going through what she is, but she is clearly an opportunist to say the least. Not 5 K, not 10K….let’s just make it 50K! This all while she’s showing she is still in the hospital recovering. This was clearly premeditated as you said Druff. She was setting this up for a while.

Shes’s taking the most graphic photos of her surgery. This is not normal from my experience. I have had a number of surgeries and the last thing I would do is share photos of the incision marks. Mentioning everything bad that has happened in her life in the most graphic detail to garner the maximum amount of sympathy. What is clear is every single post is meant to tug on poeple’s heart strings as much as humanly possible.

I saw these tweets and was just going to ignore them. Now with the 50K (of which 15k is already raised) the public, for which she is raising these funds, this situation demands some real transparency. She needs to stop talking in circles, being overtly vague & clarify her situation. No shortage of people are suffering right now and couldn’t raise $5 bucks and she can raise 15K in a fucking instant.

The tweets were fine. I felt for her even though she is clearly extremely manipulative to say the least. But I can’t abide this gofundme. We need some real answers.

[garrett]

Jami is currently e-mailing with me. She opened the e-mail conversation, not me.

I am giving her a chance to explain some of these discrepancies, and if it turns out we misjudged her, I will be happy to both change my view and apologize.

I will not post the content of these e-mails, as they are private. However, if she agrees to let me post any of it publicly, I will share it out here. So far we are only in the beginning stages of discussing this, so there's no point to ask her permission to share anything.

Yeah with peoples serious Medical conditions and that its not good to Judge and be wrong too fast, wish her the best and gl

[Rockasilly]

As soon as I saw her weeks ago openly having this debate with herself on whether she should get surgery/treatment or let herself die, I knew a GoFundMe was coming. She seems to leave the door wide open as to where the money will go, while Druff has mentioned hey most insurance companies have out of pocket maximums... Jami isn't exactly even claiming she needs the money for medical bills, just "Hey, I need money... I can't work at all as a poker player"

I also am very confused about this whole ordeal as she is claiming, hey I am in sooo much pain I can't even concentrate to play online poker now or in the near future, yet she is posting selfies, arguing, and going on and on making sure the attention is squarely on her for hours on end on twitter. That doesn't exactly hit me as someone in excruciating pain.

Maybe someone can direct her to a very kind, charitable fellow, and also fellow professional gambler, Christopher Mitchell. He is a compassionate Christian man who I am sure would love to help someone in need.

[JeffDime]

She has serious medical issues. I feel for her. But I’ve also been manipulated by people using threats of suicide & medical issues to disarm me when I had legitimate gripes with them. Many times in my life. A lot of sick people out there. They don’t all get to put up 50K go fundmes. Like I said, I saw the tweets and felt for her. But this is a bridge too far and should be clarified. I commend Druff for asking the hard questions. No one else is going to do it. It’s not easy for sure. But they need to be asked.

If this money is not going to medical bills and just poker/lifestyle that is really taking advantage of your platform. A platform I think was artificially inflated. I don’t think she got that many followers organically. But that’s just speculation. We all could use 50K.

[garrett]

As soon as I saw her weeks ago openly having this debate with herself on whether she should get surgery/treatment or let herself die, I knew a GoFundMe was coming. She seems to leave the door wide open as to where the money will go, while Druff has mentioned hey most insurance companies have out of pocket maximums... Jami isn't exactly even claiming she needs the money for medical bills, just "Hey, I need money... I can't work at all as a poker player"

I also am very confused about this whole ordeal as she is claiming, hey I am in sooo much pain I can't even concentrate to play online poker now or in the near future, yet she is posting selfies, arguing, and going on and on making sure the attention is squarely on her for hours on end on twitter. That doesn't exactly hit me as someone in excruciating pain.

Maybe someone can direct her to a very kind, charitable fellow, and also fellow professional gambler, Christopher Mitchell. He is a compassionate Christian man who I am sure would love to help someone in need.

[Dan Druff]

She has serious medical issues. I feel for her. But I’ve also been manipulated by people using threats of suicide & medical issues to disarm me when I had legitimate gripes with them. Many times in my life. A lot of sick people out there. They don’t all get to put up 50K go fundmes. Like I said, I saw the tweets and felt for her. But this is a bridge too far and should be clarified. I commend Druff for asking the hard questions. No one else is going to do it. It’s not easy for sure. But they need to be asked.

If this money is not going to medical bills and just poker/lifestyle that is really taking advantage of your platform. A platform I think was artificially inflated. I don’t think she got that many followers organically. But that’s just speculation. We all could use 50K.

It's important for her critics not to get caught up in "this is all fake" conspiracy theories, because the fact of the matter is likely that the cancer is real, and that she's really in the hospital to get some kind of surgeries related to it.

Sucks big time to be going through something like this, and if she wants to just be honest and put out a compassionate plea for someone staking her when she's healthy enough to play, I could respect that.

Unfortunately, the whole "I have medical bills and can't work (play poker), so give me $50k" thing doesn't really add up, especially since she is extremely light on specifics.

The fact that the gofundme appears to have been set up by a fake sister doesn't help matters, either.

As you said, there's a lot of sick people out there, including ones who aren't old yet, but they aren't getting $50k from strangers. If you're asking for that, you need to be fully transparent and honest.

[donkdowndonedied]

Todd knee deep in doodoo again.

Another thing - she posts some pictures. One if of what appears to be her arm and not her neck/sinus stuff. The arm is not puffy or showing signs of a recent surgery. Fairly certain that picture was not taken right after any surgery that much is clear.

At some point she'll be too old to use those pictures again. Need to strike while the iron is hot.

Also I muted her on twitter some time ago. Too much nonsense too much trending.

Edit -
I just realized she can't get by using an old picture of the neck scar because people would surely have known it existed previously. hmmm. She's totally sketch but who knows. One of those weird situations where you'd be happy to see her lying simply because that'd mean she wasn't sick.

A real puzzle. Well tell us what the outcome is, Druff !

[ftpjesus]

Here is Jami's explanation for why her last name "Lafay" isn't the same as her sister Julie Daniels:



https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1627081839088390144




https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1627159910315327489



But wait!

First off, her Facebook URL is facebook.com/jami.daniels.52




Second, here's the People Search entry for Jami from when she lived in Bigform, MT (remember, that's where her boutique was once located):




Notice she is listed as "Jami L Daniels", with the L standing for Lafay.

Lafay is her middle name. Daniels is her last name.

So she's just flat out lying that her sister "Julie Daniels" has a different last name because of having a different father. They have the same last name -- if Julie even exists, which I haven't bothered researching yet.

This is too easy.

I pointed out on Twitter her hospital arm band was visible and it showed her real last name as Daniels and that she might want to remove the photo before her real last name was exposed.