For those of you that don't know, Peter Falcone -- aka peterdc, actionjunkie (2+2), and apparently recently limpcallcallfold on 2+2, is a big-time sportsbetting scammer. He has nailed victims in both the poker community and outside the poker community for 4, 5, and 6-figure sums.
Peter's victims are extremely diverse. He has scammed people in poker -- both big names and small. He committed a "romance scam" against a really rich woman who basically invented the 900/976 phone sex industry. He even is rumored to have scammed comedian Louie Anderson.
And as I've mentioned before, I was the one who indirectly caused Peter Falcone to come to DonkDown. However, he didn't seek me out. The whole situation with me getting to know him was rather coincidental.
A female friend of Ken Scalir's wanted a driving buddy to Vegas, because she didn't want to drive 300 miles alone. She put an ad on Craigslist (real safe, huh -- girl alone wants guy to drive with in the desert), and Peter responded.
Not sure what Peter's angle was there. This girl wasn't hot, wasn't rich, and didn't have any influential friends. I think Peter was legitimately lonely and was going to Vegas anyway. She told me that he never tried anything sexually with her.
Anyway, they did this a few more times, and he also took her out occasionally to nice dinners in LA. After some months had passed, she bragged to him that she knew a professional poker player, and of course Peter got excited, claiming to be a huge poker fan. In reality, I'm sure Peter smelled a new mark.
She called me and insisted that I talk to Peter. Again, this was her idea, because she wanted to impress him. I talked to him for maybe 30 minutes, and he acted really intrigued by me and wanted to hear every poker story I could tell him. Peter claimed to be a sportsbetting pro.
At the time, the girl told me the following about Peter:
- He was a really, really nice guy, and very generous.
- He lived in a huge, beautiful house by the beach in Malibu. From her description of the house, it sounded like it was worth $10 million or more. She had been to his house and verified he really lived there.
- He never tried anything sexually with her, and only seemed interested in her company.
I think this was around October 2009.
Anyway, at the time, I just dismissed Peter as a rich guy who was a poker fanboy. I never completely believed his "sportsbetting pro" stories. I thought he had probably just inherited a lot of money and wanted people to think he earned it himself.
The first weird thing occurred in November. Peter called me and offered the following to me:
- A beautiful suite at the Wynn
- Food comps for the whole weekend
- Two tickets to see Garth Brooks' first concert there. These tickets were incredibly hard to get and this was considered a big event in Vegas.
What did he want in return?
Absolutely nothing.
This was so odd, because I had only talked to the guy like 3 or 4 times on the phone, and never met him. Why would he do me this favor?
I would have taken him up on it, but I already had a vacation planned and paid for, starting the day before the Garth concert. I had to turn it down.
Sometime around then, he found DonkDown. I never told him about it. He must have googled me. He registered as peterdc, but told me not to tell anyone that I knew him, or that he was a pro sportsbettor. Oddly enough, he eventually revealed both of these things on his own.
In March, 2010, Peter called me while I was driving. He was pitching some kind of new contest on DonkDown that he wanted to pay for. I told him that I could only talk for about five minutes, as I was on my way to a sports bar to reserve some space in their back room for my upcoming fantasy baseball draft. Peter said, "Oh come on, don't have your fantasy draft in some bar! I'll get you a suite at Bellagio for that!"
I tried to tell him it wasn't necessary, but he insisted. Finally, I accepted, but was skeptical and booked the sports bar anyway, planning to cancel if Peter came through. (The draft was at 10:00am on a Saturday, so it was highly unlikely the sportsbar would need that back room for anyone else, anyway.)
The draft came, and Peter wasn't already in Vegas as he had promised. I had a hard time reaching him, and got nervous. Finally, I got him on the phone and he said he was driving with a few buddies from LA to Vegas, and would be there around 1:00am. I met him at around 1:30 at Bellagio, and he helped me bring my stuff up to the suite. Nothing went in my name. I never showed any ID. He gave me a room key, helped me move furniture around to set up a "conference area" in the living room for the expected 12 people, and took me for a meal at the Bellagio Cafe. He paid for that meal, too. I called downstairs and verified that my name was on the list of authorized people to use the room, and they said it was. Peter told me that he was going back to his room, but that he would come meet all the guys at the draft and buy everyone room service lunch.
Needless to say, I canceled the sports bar, and the guys at the draft were really impressed by everything. When it came time for lunch, however, I couldn't reach Peter. He was MIA the whole day. I left him several messages. I finally told the guys at the draft that the guy who got me the suite also promised to pay for lunch, but that I couldn't reach him. I told them that we would have to pay for it on our own, and that I would refund them the money if Peter came through with his promise later on. Everyone agreed. Near the end of the meal, I got another strange call from Peter. He had "business" and had to abruptly leave Vegas -- just 10 hours or so after he arrived. He was already out of town. However, he said he arranged that our lunch would be covered by his comp.
I called the front desk, and indeed a "cash credit" of $400 was placed on the room.
None of the guys had to pay for their lunch, but about $100 was left over. I never used a "cash credit" before, so I didn't know how it worked. If it was going to fall off and disappear if I didn't use it, I was going to make sure to use it. Preferably, I wanted it to just go back to Peter's comp account. I called Peter, and he surprisingly told me just to keep the $100 for myself. I told him I didn't want to do that, as he had already done enough! I told him I would find a way to get it back, but he insisted that I should keep it. When I checked out, Bellagio told me that this was not a comp, but rather $400 in cash that Peter left at the front desk! This really made me suspicious, because I had been led to believe that all of this was paid for by comps, which Peter earned from his heavy action at Bellagio. Now I really suspected that Peter was just a rich guy who wanted desperately to make friends. I told them to mail the $100 to Peter, which they agreed.
Anyway, that was my only in-person encounter with Peter.
Micon said last night on radio that I "semi-vouched" for him, but that's not true. I always thought something might be "off" with him, but I never thought scammer. It appeared much more to be a lonely rich guy who liked to pretend he earned the money he actually inherited. I didn't see a reason to turn down all of the free things he was offering DonkDown because he was asking for nothing in return, and as far as I could see, wasn't setting up any scams. It should also be noted that Micon and Martha went out with Peter for several nice meals, and they both had glowing things to say about him on the boards. (Micon likes to portray it nowadays that he was the one suspicious of Peter and that I was bamboozled by him, which simply isn't true. We both thought pretty much the same things about the guy -- kind of a cautious optimism.)
In early December, 2010, I was moving from one secret location to another. I also had a 6-week-old baby, and had just gotten over shingles. Needless to say, it was a busy time, and an especially busy day, as the move was actually occurring. I got a frantic call from Micon that a guy had contacted him about Peter being a scammer, and that the guy wanted desperately to talk to me. It was not one of our users, but rather a 2+2 guy who knew Peter as "actionjunkie" there. I called the guy and heard the story, which sounded very legit. It appeared that Peter was most likely a sportsbetting scammer, but I had a problem. The guy (who later came public under the screen name ramboftw) was owed 70k by Peter, and was still holding out hope of getting paid if he kept quiet. He made me SWEAR not to make the story public if he told me, so I made him that promise. If I didn't make the promise, he would have refused to tell me the story.
At this point, I was torn between the decision of warning all of our users (and betraying the trust of ramboftw) or keeping it quiet (and potentially endangering our users). It was an EXTREMELY tough decision, as I felt I might be hurting someone either way. I discussed it with Micon, and we chose a middle ground -- contacting people privately that we knew Peter had been in contact with, telling them not to deal with him, and also making those people promise not to say anything for the moment. That's exactly what we did, but it wasn't long until ramboftw himself came forward on DD, and the whole story came out, anyway.
Anyway, as soon as the ramboftw stuff came out, Peter never contacted me again. He kept in contact with people like Chinamaniac, CMONEY, and Brandon, but stopped talking to me. I think my reputation of being someone who aggressively presses for the truth (and doesn't accept BS excuses) probably scared him away from wanting to talk to me -- figuring it would only do more harm than good. I thought Peter might try to call me and ask me to take down the thread or vouch for him (neither of which I would have done), but he never did. To this day, he hasn't contacted me, nor has he contacted the girl that originally introduced me to him.
So that's my story of my encounters with Peter Falcone. Turned out that the beautiful Malibu home he "owned" was really the property of his 50-something girlfriend, the aforementioned queen of the '80s phone sex industry. He also apparently charged my Bellagio suite on her credit card. His "comps" were mostly nonexistent. Most of that was actually paid for by this woman's credit card.
The one thing I still haven't figured out is what motivates him. Is he a degenerate gambler? Is he a sociopath? Is he lonely and does this as some sort of sick way to make temporary friendships with people?
Hard to tell. He seems to always be broke unless he has money that he has recently scammed, so I really think he sinks all of the scam money into a combination of gambling and generously spending on people he wants to impress. If he were just a simple, run-of-the-mill scammer, he wouldn't have befriended that girl I knew, as he literally got nothing out of the whole thing, and the fact that she knew a poker player (which he only realized months into the friendship) was a coincidence.
I don't think he's strictly in it for the money, because that phone sex lady was in love with him, and he could have easily married her and had access to tens of millions of dollars. He didn't do that. Instead, he scammed her for hundreds of thousands of dollars before she finally accepted the truth and booted his ass out.
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Originally Posted by vpplayer
