Laptops being hacked from Hotel Arts at EPT Barcelona

[haleylh]

Here's a link to a story I wrote last year at pokerfuse (where I no longer write), which centers on Samer's previous hacking activities. Includes the reported connections to Kowssarie, adzizzy and the Swedish Bandidos biker gang, including the Skype chat (posted by I think William Reynolds??) between adz and Samer about the hacking exploit. To the best of my knowledge adz denies those connections and claims the chat was faked, and William Reynolds isn't exactly a saint anyway, but that's a whole 'nuther story. There's also been no public, direct accusing by anyone (i.e. Stars) of Samer and Co. in connection with this EPT Barcelona hacking, but I don't think that anyone with half a clue is looking anywhere else, given what Jens posted.

Clearly, Stars knows -exactly- who was behind it. Understand that whoever was doing this already had to have enough money in an account on Stars to be able to set themselves up at a table opposite Jens or another victim, and it had to be at high enough stakes to make the dumping worthwhile. Trying to dump half a milly to an account with $50 in it just isn't going to work; it would take too long to move the money over and someone's bound to notice it and block the account.

Here's the link to the thread on 4 where the chat was posted. I archived it, as it's the type of thing that tends to disappear w/o notice over there.

[yaahello]

Here's a link to a story I wrote last year at pokerfuse (where I no longer write), which centers on Samer's previous hacking activities. Includes the reported connections to Kowssarie, adzizzy and the Swedish Bandidos biker gang, including the Skype chat (posted by I think William Reynolds??) between adz and Samer about the hacking exploit. To the best of my knowledge adz denies those connections and claims the chat was faked, and William Reynolds isn't exactly a saint anyway, but that's a whole 'nuther story. There's also been no public, direct accusing by anyone (i.e. Stars) of Samer and Co. in connection with this EPT Barcelona hacking, but I don't think that anyone with half a clue is looking anywhere else, given what Jens posted.

Clearly, Stars knows -exactly- who was behind it. Understand that whoever was doing this already had to have enough money in an account on Stars to be able to set themselves up at a table opposite Jens or another victim, and it had to be at high enough stakes to make the dumping worthwhile. Trying to dump half a milly to an account with $50 in it just isn't going to work; it would take too long to move the money over and someone's bound to notice it and block the account.

Here's the link to the thread on 4 where the chat was posted. I archived it, as it's the type of thing that tends to disappear w/o notice over there.

randomly stumbled on this page over at 4 and found this post pretty interesting considering everything. just more similarities
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...9&postcount=47

[Dan Druff]

We've discussed Samer Rahman before on this forum, as well as our radio show. If you want to see my write-up on Samer, skip to page 2:

http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...nd-scam-others

Stars' response to this and their ensuing cover-up is still disgusting, though.

[BeerAndPoker]

Pokerstars confirmed they are returning to the Hotel Arts next year on the PCA live broadcast today. Lee Jones said it was a great place for the previous 8 or whatever years and that they will be working to improve the experience for next year which they don't expect what happened in 2013 to happen again. Lee also said their are a half of dozen fine hotels in walking distance from the Hotel Arts so if someone don't want to stay there they can pick one of the other hotels.

[vegetera]

Pokerstars confirmed they are returning to the Hotel Arts next year on the PCA live broadcast today. Lee Jones said it was a great place for the previous 8 or whatever years and that they will be working to improve the experience for next year which they don't expect what happened in 2013 to happen again. Lee also said their are a half of dozen fine hotels in walking distance from the Hotel Arts so if someone don't want to stay there they can pick one of the other hotels.

"if you don't like hotel Arts, you stay somewhere else". Really mature answer. It's like saying "if you don't want to get raped don't get out" or "If you don't want your computer hacked, leave it at home"

[Dan Druff]

Pokerstars confirmed they are returning to the Hotel Arts next year on the PCA live broadcast today. Lee Jones said it was a great place for the previous 8 or whatever years and that they will be working to improve the experience for next year which they don't expect what happened in 2013 to happen again. Lee also said their are a half of dozen fine hotels in walking distance from the Hotel Arts so if someone don't want to stay there they can pick one of the other hotels.

"if you don't like hotel Arts, you stay somewhere else". Really mature answer. It's like saying "if you don't want to get raped don't get out" or "If you don't want your computer hacked, leave it at home"

But also totally obvious this was where Stars was going with this thing the whole time.

That was the reason for the cover-up.

They wanted to minimize the impact (and try to steer everyone away from the correct belief that hotel security was dirty), knowing they were coming back next year.

At least this shed some light upon Stars that they only care about their bottom line and don't give a shit about the security or safety of their players. So many fanboys were putting them on a pedestal for years, insisting that they were so great for poker and so responsible.

[BeerAndPoker]

I believe I got almost timed right where Lee Jones starts to talk about it but they do get distracted for about a minute during a hand before finishing the conversation.



1h 51min 47sec mark.

[lvpkr1009]

I believe I got almost timed right where Lee Jones starts to talk about it but they do get distracted for about a minute during a hand before finishing the conversation.



1h 51min 47sec mark.

What a douchebag thing to say...."it's not important what happened at the hotel arts last year but what's going to happen there this year"

[Shizzmoney]

"The entire event was stressful, disorganized, and downright unpleasant to be at."

I understand Barcelona is a great city....but why after all of this fail would people still want to go?

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/773209112016523268

[BeerAndPoker]

^^^ - Her points are valid and the overall event being a cluster fuck makes the trip pointless.

In general, I never got the whole travel to play a MTT unless you are a European coming out to the WSOP each year because you will have a ton of mtts/cash games to play for over a month. MTTs are about sample size and you aren't getting that flying to one location even if they have a few preliminary events before their main one.

As an American if you are going to spend 12 hours a day in a card room you can do that on US soil for much less and you aren't going to want to do much site seeing when the day is over so you miss out on what a location you've never been to has to offer.

The last thing I'd want to do in life when someone asks me if I enjoyed Barcelona is to say "It seemed nice, but I was in a card room the entire time". A pro poker player would think nothing is wrong with that but anyone else you tell that story to is gonna be shaking their head thinking wtf???

[shoeshine box]

I have to ask why the Victims did not simply Call the POLICE themselves??? I know for sure outside the front doors there is a Policeman on the block....p.s. there is no FREE shoeshines in Barcelona.