Rob Mercer accused of terminal cancer Gofundme scam which netted up to $40k

[JeffDime]

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If anyone knows what space this is, TimeStamp of some sort or maybe a recording I would love to hear this interaction. This is the problem with the spaces. They’re just people talking for hours & hours about bullshit and then something notable will happen & disappear into the ether.

Now, I did hear Vertucci deny he even knew about the GoFundme. He’s a talker, not a worker. We all know the type. Thinks he can just do everything on the fly with his selling skills. But let’s be real, if you are a person of means and encourage others to donate money to a cause and you don’t donate yourself. JFC. Add on that it ends up most likely being a total scam. Yikes.

I can already tell you Nick’s probable rebuttal. He will say he was going to personally give Rob his donation in Vegas but the red flags starting flying immediately when he arrived. But I would really love to hear this interaction. It is possible Rob shamed Nick into ponying up coin right after this space. Either way it just seems like classic Vertucci.

But please, if anyone has any information leading to the retrieval of this supposed interaction…let us know.

BTW In general I agree with Druff about Vertucci just being sloppy & wanting to come off charitable here. However, if he did in fact not donate himself that speaks highly to his character. So it’s pretty much a different issue in some sense.

On a positive note I’m very glad that out of all this mess we have heard more from Cody. I’m glad Druff will be interviewing him. I’m happy that he has gotten a chance to live out some of his dreams. On a different note I hope Rob is prosecuted for this if the evidence so shows this was what it looks like. The cherry on top for me was him waiting in the payout line to scam Cody. Maybe scamming a real terminally ill person may give authorities more reason to give a shit.

[Tankazoo]

is it time for Mercer to go on my website of scammers? Wowow traffic has been picking up there, hope that keeps up
Ill let PFA members decide Mercers fate

[Dan Druff]

I think it's been clear the whole way that Nick didn't personally donate anything. He just arranged the fundraising, and then pledged to donate the remainder if it fell short. It didn't fall short, so Nick didn't donate.

But whatever. That's fine. Nick has a big platform and shouldn't be shamed for fundraising without donating himself. The donation is the platform.

The only issue with him here is the fact that he didn't vet Mercer, but I'm sure that was carelessness and nothing cold/malicious. Even if you think badly of Nick, it's not even in his self-interest to support something like this and have it turn out to be a scam.

But yes, I had heard something (in the past few days) about Rob being an ingrate and complaining about things, rather than being grateful for the chance he was given. Had I known this at the time, I would have been highly suspicious this was a scam. Actual terminal cancer patients given money to live out their dream never act like ingrates. You can't even say that's just Rob's personality, because he turned down the initial 200-ish buyin stakes offered by Snoopdoug, claiming he did not want to take from anyone. So to not only suddenly take 5 figures, but also bitch about things connected to it, you know something's not right.

[JeffDime]

I think it's been clear the whole way that Nick didn't personally donate anything. He just arranged the fundraising, and then pledged to donate the remainder if it fell short. It didn't fall short, so Nick didn't donate.

But whatever. That's fine. Nick has a big platform and shouldn't be shamed for fundraising without donating himself. The donation is the platform.

The pledge was meaningless as he pretty well knew once he amplified this we were talking about chump change for the main event buy-in goal to be reached. Then we 3 or 4X it in cash donations from his buddies, which clearly just went to degeneracy. We may differ on Vertucci here Druff. But other than a few critical posts on forums such as this, Nick skates regardless.

These won’t even lay a glove on him. Like all the other complaints for his past business practices. He just keeps skating. If we look at this incident in a vacuum, I’m pretty much with you. But there’s a pattern of some poor business practices and a pattern of him completely skating.

There is no rule that you have to actually donate to a cause you are pushing others to do so. But I cam tell you my friends would be none to happy if I did that. For sure that there are people pretty irked but not only being scammed, but that the ask came from someone who didn’t lose a penny. But at this point I’m barking into the wind. It is what it is. People can all draw their own conclusion.

[Tankazoo]

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https://twitter.com/PuntingStacks/status/1694602658890580298

[Mission146]

I just want to let everyone at PFA know that I, sadly, have cancer.

By cancer, I mean I'm missing a tooth.

I had to have a tooth extracted because I intervened in a bar fight a few years back (I think '18 but might have been early '19) that really wasn't any of my business. The only reason that I intervened is because it was three out-of-towners and two local black dudes, one of whom I recognized from my bar hops and was always nice enough. It looked like the third out-of-towner was going to stay out of it, so I would have left it alone.

Anyway, the third guy got physically involved (and it wasn't to break the fight up) because his friends were losing. Obviously, I couldn't let a 3-2 stand without doing something, so I jumped in and was just going to attempt to restrain that guy. Somehow, one of the other out-of-towners got free and totally blindsided me. He got me pretty good and, evidently, knocked my tooth partially into my sinuses wherein it shattered.

That guy got to go night-night for his trouble.

Anyway, the bartender finally yells that he's calling the police so the two black dudes and myself all went our separate ways. As far as the out-of-town guys, only one of them was walking anytime soon, so I don't know or care what happened to them.

I ended up having what was left of that tooth extracted a couple years back. I wasn't aware that the tooth had partially shattered in my sinuses. The dentist called it the most difficult extraction she had ever performed for that reason. Honestly, I probably would have just continued to live with it, but it got to the point that my mouth would just randomly bleed and then my good teeth would all be smeared with blood.

This story is completely true, except the cancer part, so please give me one million dollars. Preferably in non-consecutive, unmarked, cash.

Of course, I don't actually want any money. I can also prove that I had a tooth extracted and MAYBE that it was shattered in my sinuses if they take notes to that effect. I'm not a dentist, so I don't know if they do or not. I can't really prove I was in a bar fight other than I talked to a poster on WoV about it (on the phone) the following day and you could either take his word or the word of my fiancee.

That's the most recent fight I got in, I believe. I thought I was going to get into one yesterday, but the pussy backed down. What a shame.

[SlowRoll]

The pledge was meaningless as he pretty well knew once he amplified this we were talking about chump change for the main event buy-in goal to be reached. Then we 3 or 4X it in cash donations from his buddies, which clearly just went to degeneracy. We may differ on Vertucci here Druff. But other than a few critical posts on forums such as this, Nick skates regardless.

These won’t even lay a glove on him. Like all the other complaints for his past business practices. He just keeps skating. If we look at this incident in a vacuum, I’m pretty much with you. But there’s a pattern of some poor business practices and a pattern of him completely skating.

There is no rule that you have to actually donate to a cause you are pushing others to do so. But I cam tell you my friends would be none to happy if I did that. For sure that there are people pretty irked but not only being scammed, but that the ask came from someone who didn’t lose a penny. But at this point I’m barking into the wind. It is what it is. People can all draw their own conclusion.

I agree with your sentiment towards Nick.
His involvement in the mercer fund raising kept me completely disinterested - i am pretty aware of his long history of scamming.

But there are many other things to go after him for and if you are willing to spend any time digging into the 'content' that he creates you'll have a long list of things he promotes which are obvious grifts / scams.
He's on a mission to be a poor mans alex jones, dumber and with a lot of patriotic tattoos which he got during his epic, ongoing mid life crisis.

unfortunately i think that josh macciello had a plan to make his CANCER CURING CBD PRODUCT be the thing that 'saved robs life'. he is the type to think people will blindly believe this story. when he shows up in spaces, you can hear his ego growing everything someone mentions his name as someone who tried to 'help mercer'.

macciello has that same trait where he thinks his 'sales game' will allow him to solve any problem. but in reality, everything he touches ends in court.
he talks about 'his cbd guy' in this weird way that makes it clear he has something shady going on and wants to distance himself for the inevitable downfall and lawsuits that come with all of his 'business ventures'

The hcl crew is the most self absorbed, out of touch, and all around stupid group of people i've seen enter the poker world in quite some time.

[Ryback_feed_me_more]

is it time for Mercer to go on my website of scammers? Wowow traffic has been picking up there, hope that keeps up
Ill let PFA members decide Mercers fate

This goes way beyond you Tankazoo.. This Mercer pile of shit deserves to get the FBI knocking on his door and federal charges for wire fraud among others. People have been criminally charged for this sort of scam.

[Tankazoo]

is it time for Mercer to go on my website of scammers? Wowow traffic has been picking up there, hope that keeps up
Ill let PFA members decide Mercers fate

This goes way beyond you Tankazoo.. This Mercer pile of shit deserves to get the FBI knocking on his door and federal charges for wire fraud among others. People have been criminally charged for this sort of scam.

Cool, I look forward to the results

[JeffDime]

This goes way beyond you Tankazoo.. This Mercer pile of shit deserves to get the FBI knocking on his door and federal charges for wire fraud among others. People have been criminally charged for this sort of scam.

Cool, I look forward to the results

@Ryback…I hope you are right about where this ultimately goes. However, I wouldn’t discourage someone like Tanka from including him on his website. People are already forgetting about this and anything to keep some kind of spotlight on Mercer & what he did is a big plus imho. Mercer is banking on the fact that this blows over relatively quickly and he can breathe a sign of relief and keep doing meth until he needs dentures.

@Tanka…I think it’s good for both society & for your business overall what you are doing. I like the fact that you seem to want to include scammers that really are not likely to be collectible for you, as well as those you can. So keep it up!

[Tankazoo]

Cool, I look forward to the results

@Ryback…I hope you are right about where this ultimately goes. However, I wouldn’t discourage someone like Tanka from including him on his website. People are already forgetting about this and anything to keep some kind of spotlight on Mercer & what he did is a big plus imho. Mercer is banking on the fact that this blows over relatively quickly and he can breathe a sign of relief and keep doing meth until he needs dentures.

@Tanka…I think it’s good for both society & for your business overall what you are doing. I like the fact that you seem to want to include scammers that really are not likely to be collectible for you, as well as those you can. So keep it up!

thanks so much
I actually took off the option on the site to contact me for collecting purposes
Im more concerned with people knowing who the scammers are than I am about drumming up business, plus Im buried in work right now, I wouldnt take any more clients anyways

[Dan Druff]

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https://twitter.com/PuntingStacks/status/1694602658890580298

I remember this tweet.

At the time, I wasn't sure whether to take his tone as jealousy or sarcasm. At the time, I thought his point was that there are many very sick people in poker, many worse off than Jami, and yet somehow she feels entitled to the community's money while everyone else gets nothing.

I thought his point was reasonable. I could picture a dying young man watching Jami (in much better condition than him) receiving $17k for her sob story, simply because she was an attractive female.

However, at the same time, I did see some possible entitlement there. Was he making the point that we should also give money to him, or was that end line sarcastic?

I warmed up to him when Snoopdoug and a few others offered to stake him in 3-figure NoCal events, and he turned them all down. At that point, I assumed his objection was just to Jami receiving money, and not that he felt he deserved it as well.


In hindsight, of course, this was at best an initial troll job which turned into a likely con, and at worst a premeditated WSOP scam.

[Dan Druff]

Oh, and apparently that wasn't Mercer's first tweet.

It was just his first tweet about the cancer thing.

This one from 2022 was quite telling. Funny that he admits he would ghost Rampage if he was staked for the Main Event and won! Probably the truth!

[Tankazoo]

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https://twitter.com/blankcheckben/status/1695163687638815133

[Mission146]

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https://twitter.com/blankcheckben/status/1695163687638815133

Yes. Don't do that.

[SlowRoll]

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don't take advice from a life long scammer (vertucci) on where to direct your charitable donations.

[Online Veteran]

Please, never give money to strangers on the internet. Most poker players are broke degenerates who can't be trusted. I don't blame Druff for not bringing attention to this matter, after the whole Jami Lafay debacle.

[Dan Druff]

Funny enough, there are two incorrect narratives about my involvement in this Mercer thing -- one undeservedly good, and one undeservedly bad.

The undeservedly good narrative is appearing in some poker media that I was the one who blew open the Robert Mercer scandal. False. I did not do any investigating into Mercer, nor did I blow anything open. That was done by Snoopdoug and some of his friends behind the scenes. They didn't inform me of any of this because I'm not friends with any of them. I heard about it when Snoopdoug posted publicly about his suspicions regarding Mercer.

So why are some outlets giving me credit? Because I was the one who amplified the story. Snoopdoug is well known in poker's Twitter Spaces, but beyond that he doesn't have much of a following. I have a bigger and wider range of followers, whereas Snoopdoug mostly has NoCal and Spaces people. Therefore, when I tweeted about it (shortly after Snoopdoug did), it caught on more. Furthermore, since I did the writeup on this thread fairly quickly, PFA was the first website where you could read a comprehensive telling of the Mercer story. This falsely gave people the impression that I was the one who outed Mercer, but that's simply not true. It was Snoopdoug, who also was instrumental in initially promoting Mercer. Of course, Snoopdoug does not deserve any blame because he thought he was doing something nice for a guy dying of cancer, but it was his close involvement with Mercer which motivated him to do the investigating when things started looking funny.


The undeservedly bad narrative has already been discussed in this thread. Some idiots believe I didn't call out Mercer due to sexism. They believe that I took pleasure in tearing down Jami because she was a woman, but when I had the same suspicions about Rob, I gave him a pass due to being a dude. That is so laughable and false, and anyone watching my nearly 20-year history in calling out poker/gambling scams knows it's bullshit. Almost everyone I've called out over the years has been male! If I chose to give males a pass, this site wouldn't exist, nor would PFA Radio, nor would my reputation of outing scammers. Why? Because almost all of them are male! It's absurd to think that, after outing and discussing hundreds of male scammers since 2004, I would suddenly decide to give a cancer scammer a break because he's a guy.

As I already stated, I had zero evidence that Mercer was scamming, and I had no evidence of any past wrongdoing on his part. All I had was a gut feeling suspicion in mid-June. That wasn't enough for me to rake a supposedly terminal cancer patient over the coals, especially given the incredibly harsh treatment I got from many people for questioning some of Jami's story. Had I entered that fray, I would have received incredible hate and extreme vitriol. I would have been seen as the cruel guy who picks on cancer patients. I just couldn't -- not without some kind of concrete evidence. I already went through enough shit about Jami -- and with her I had proof of lies within her Gofundme, regardless of whether or not she had cancer. With Rob, I had nothing I could point to that was a provable lie, and nothing about his reputation prior to this.

Anyway, I don't want to beat a dead horse about the assholes playing the sexism card here, but I just wanted to point out how funny it is that the same story has me improperly lauded as a hero and improperly vilified as a hypocritical sexist who enabled a scammer.

In short, LOL INTERNETS

[JeffDime]

Great interview with Cody Druff. Well done. I would encourage everyone that hasn’t, to listen to the interview when Druff archives last night’s radio. I didn’t know Cody’s exact medical problems and it was heart breaking to hear what he has gone through. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.

Very worthy of all the charity he has received and more. Very gracious young man and the true silver lining to this whole story. I wish Cody all the best.

[Dan Druff]

Vertucci finally going to speak out fully about this. Will be interesting to hear. The title card says "fake cancer scammer Rob Mercer" -- no "alleged" in there. Wow!

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