Haley Hintze writing a great series tearing apart the awful Ben Mezrich AP/Scott Tom book

[Crowe Diddly]

Just checked the itunes store. Haley, any chance you could add your review here? Too big a marketplace to ignore, it has a 4 star average review now. We should fix that.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/str...9221541?mt=11#

I would encourage everyone to give this thing a 1 star review wherever you see it. Why the fuck not, you know? It's the right thing to do, I'm fairly certain.

[Steve-O]

Just checked the itunes store. Haley, any chance you could add your review here? Too big a marketplace to ignore, it has a 4 star average review now. We should fix that.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/str...9221541?mt=11#

I would encourage everyone to give this thing a 1 star review wherever you see it. Why the fuck not, you know? It's the right thing to do, I'm fairly certain.

The best thing to do on Amazon is to say the 1-star reviews were helpful, as Amazon sorts them that way

[haleylh]

Just checked the itunes store. Haley, any chance you could add your review here? Too big a marketplace to ignore, it has a 4 star average review now. We should fix that.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/str...9221541?mt=11#

I would encourage everyone to give this thing a 1 star review wherever you see it. Why the fuck not, you know? It's the right thing to do, I'm fairly certain.

I tried to do that, but Apple wants my credit-card info merely to register an e-mail address. So that's not happening.

To be honest, the only way Ben Mezrich will receive his proper comeuppance is if a mainstream outlet of significant size can be interesting in covering the story of his fraud. I'm trying to interest a few, but more contacts to places such as Huffington Post, Smoking Gun, Salon, etc. might convince the powers that be to look into this. Pick your faves and send them links and background on the story; if you don't at least try, the AP thieves win.

[Steve-O]

Just checked the itunes store. Haley, any chance you could add your review here? Too big a marketplace to ignore, it has a 4 star average review now. We should fix that.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/str...9221541?mt=11#

I would encourage everyone to give this thing a 1 star review wherever you see it. Why the fuck not, you know? It's the right thing to do, I'm fairly certain.

I tried to do that, but Apple wants my credit-card info merely to register an e-mail address. So that's not happening.

To be honest, the only way Ben Mezrich will receive his proper comeuppance is if a mainstream outlet of significant size can be interesting in covering the story of his fraud. I'm trying to interest a few, but more contacts to places such as Huffington Post, Smoking Gun, Salon, etc. might convince the powers that be to look into this. Pick your faves and send them links and background on the story; if you don't at least try, the AP thieves win.

Do we know Mezrich's political persuasion? would probably make a particular outlet more likely to bash him if they disagree with his politics. HP and Salon are left leaning (to put it nicely) so if Mezrich is a lefty they are probably unlikely to trash him, whereas Free Republic, The Blaze, Drudge, etc might be more than happy to lambaste a lefty author, or vice versa if he's righty... He seems more Libertarian than anything to be honest

[haleylh]

I tried to do that, but Apple wants my credit-card info merely to register an e-mail address. So that's not happening.

To be honest, the only way Ben Mezrich will receive his proper comeuppance is if a mainstream outlet of significant size can be interesting in covering the story of his fraud. I'm trying to interest a few, but more contacts to places such as Huffington Post, Smoking Gun, Salon, etc. might convince the powers that be to look into this. Pick your faves and send them links and background on the story; if you don't at least try, the AP thieves win.

Do we know Mezrich's political persuasion? would probably make a particular outlet more likely to bash him if they disagree with his politics. HP and Salon are left leaning (to put it nicely) so if Mezrich is a lefty they are probably unlikely to trash him, whereas Free Republic, The Blaze, Drudge, etc might be more than happy to lambaste a lefty author, or vice versa if he's righty... He seems more Libertarian than anything to be honest

That's a good thought, re Drudge in particular. Also, my little series is now up to eight parts. I swear I could do 25 on all the badness and lies in that book, but enough is enough.

[Dan Druff]

Mezrich speaks on 2+2:

Ok, been following this thread since its beginning; some very interesting conversations, and certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion. I went into this book knowing there would be a fair amount of controversy when it came out; not unlike my Facebook book, there are multiple sides to the story, and I'd chosen to come at it from the direction that most intrigues me, which may not be the direction that everyone out there wants this book to be written from. However, as an author, my goal is to go inside a story and see it through the eyes of the people who were there; to try and tell it as a thriller, from the POV of the characters themselves, in as true a fashion as my research- which involves hundreds of hours of interviews with the people themselves; thousands of pages of court documents; and whatever else i can find- allows. The only agenda I have is to tell this true story in an entertaining, enjoyable fashion; people who read my books understand what they are getting into. Some like the way I write my nonfiction, others don't; that's the nature of the beast.

Straight Flush is not a book focused on the AP cheating scandal, or the UB cheating scandal; that book may very well still be written, and there are plenty of competent journalists who seem to be very interested in writing that story. Straight Flush is the story of the rise of AP from an idea formed by a group of frat brothers, and the crash of AP due to the DOJ's takedown of the industry. It's about young men who turned a simple idea into a million dollar a day business; how they navigated the wild west atmosphere of Costa Rica; how they took risks and often got into trouble; and how it all fell apart, through the hypocrisy of UIGEA and what i see as a ridiculous, unfair legal action by the DOJ. My hope is that this book helps in the fight to make online poker legal, while telling a thrilling story about a group of complex individuals; these guys aren't saints by any stretch of the imagination- nor are they apparitions of evil. They are a group of friends who tried to do something cool, got caught up in a world of fast money, exotic thrills, and yes, temptations; it is indeed a story that involves greed, risky decisions, danger, and in the end, a big fall.

Both the AP cheating scandal and the UB cheating scandals are in the narrative; within the ten year timeline of the story, they are not the central focus, nor do i believe they should be; certainly, there are those who disagree with the way those scenes are written, and I look forward to reading other accounts of those events.

The truth is, the vast majority of people who lost money on Black Friday did not lose money because of cheating, or because of Scott Tom; IMO, they lost money because the DOJ shut the business down, froze assets; shady processors vanished with millions of dollars, many millions more were used to pay off employees because of costa rican laws, and millions more went to lawyers for legal defense. If Black Friday had not occured, players would not have lost that money. Unfortunately, the company didn't have a big enough war chest to pay off its accounts, and many people were devastated. All of that is presented in the book.

In any event, I appreciate the discourse, am fascinated by much of the research that those on this blog have done into the cheating scandals and the storyline, and look forward to continuing the debate about online gambling, as the story works its way farther and farther into the mainstream.

Best
Ben Mezrich

[Dan Druff]

Lots of negative responses on 2+2 to the above, as expected.

Here is a sample of one:

Ben -

You didn't have money stolen by these operators. This is where the outrage is coming from. To opine that this was a DOJ thing and these guys were scapegoats just blatantly misses on all conceivable levels, and not to mention insulting to those who were cheated by these men.

I get that by just admitting that, and conceding its point, would disrupt the version found in your book (and by its going to print too late for retractions), but that is why you are getting heat.

Just by your comments here and elsewhere, it seems to me that you only took one version of the story, put into your archetypal structure, made the timeline fit your narrative, and called it good. By doing so though you didn't account for those here that would be ripped off by your narrative (and by the frat boys who initially perpetuated that narrative and crime).

While the story of ideas, turned to riches, turned to greed, turned to vice, turned to losing everything, makes a good VH1 special (and you can spin this yarn quite well also), this is the subject where people know the truth.

These guys had the means to steal money - something in the poker community is very sensitive about, and with good reason. The reason why Haley is appropriately angry with you is that you haven't listened or even acknowledged the possibility that you might have missed some of the important details of this particular story. Their greed caused them to cheat. The DOJ business was just icing on the cake.

These guys were never held accountable for their actions due to the unregulated environment of online poker, which is why we need it to be regulated for every jurisdiction. If you had something valuable that you had stolen from you, and the theives were still in the public eye and never held responsible for their actions, and no one listened to you, I'll wager (giving you odds), that you would be downright angry. Even more so if someone from the outside your experience believed the theives' version of events, published a book, and profited from it.

If you can't see that...then I don't know what else to write...

ES

[Dan Druff]

Mezrich responded with this nonsense, and subsequently vanished. I don't think he'll be back.

Ok, lots of posts, too many to try to respond to right now, but first off, let me start by saying I agree with many of these points concerning the end game at AB/UB vs Pokerstars; in the book I think it's clear (though many of you seem to disagree) that Black Friday left the players devastated because the business, due to prohibition-like persecution, was being run using overseas, shady payment processing, with no regulations protecting player money; the nature of the payment system was inherently flawed because of these complex steps the companies had to take to get money in and out of the US via these phony 'companies' (i.e. the ones selling nonexistant golf balls, flower delivery, etc,). I think there's a pretty good explanation on this link:

http://www.billrini.com/2011/05/12/p...imple-version/

that seems, to me, to explain some aspects of what was going on in all of these companies, and why PokerStars was able to pay back accounts while other companies couldn't. This isn't the kind of writing I do, and it wouldn't fit in the kind of book I write; but I'm sure many of you can go even farther to explain that aspect of how things went bad. The broad strokes, in my opinion, are how i described it- and I maintain that the blame should be aimed at the DOJ and UIGEA for setting this all in motion and creating this prohibition atmosphere. But I don't have a horse in this race, you can blame whoever you'd like. Scott and Hilt maintain that for the final several years of the business they had zero control of the company, they were not shareholders, directors, executives, consultants, etc. Pete, Garin and Brent were still involved but only as employees. I assume this won't convince people or keep the blame from flowing their way, but it does seem to me that the notion that people lost money because these guys were "cheats" is based more on emotion than on fact. The cheating and Black Friday are two separate events, involving different casts.

Most of the other comments seem to either be attacks on my style of nonfiction- which i understand, it's not for everyone- or a furious calling out of the AP 'founders'; specifically, Scott, and then after that, I think the brush seems to have a pretty wide stroke); related to the AP cheating scandal. I'm not here to defend them, again, I don't have a horse in that race, and personally i don't think the book paints anyone as a saint, this is simply the characters built via interviews, as they are, in their own words. I agree with everyone that the cheating was indeed a scandal, that the bones of that story are in the book, and that the more complex intricacies of that story are still to be told. I believe that part of the book is handled appropriately, but others can certainly go deeper and dig for more facts. In any event, I am not an investigative journalist, and I have always been perfectly clear about what I write, and how I write it. Narrative nonfiction- true stories written in a thrilleresque style; some of you will enjoy it, some will not.

Again, best, hopefully more to come:

Ben Mezrich

[Dan Druff]

There are many flaws in Mezrich's logic, but the biggest flaw is his claim that Black Friday was to blame for the demise of AP.

Black Friday simply put an end to the ongoing process of theft.

That process, simply put, was as follows:

1) Players deposit money to AP.

2) Scott Tom & associates steal it.

3) When players attempt to withdraw, they are only allowed to get paid with NEW deposits coming in -- a textbook example of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

4) If new deposits stop or cannot take place due to external factors (such as Black Friday), Scott Tom & friends simply pack up and leave with all of the stolen money.


That's the reality of what happened, and the above completely ignores the entire cheating/superusing scandal, which was horrendous all by itself.

It is likely that Mezrich was paid by Scott Tom and Oscar Hilt Tatum to write this story and pass it off as "nonfiction".

Mezrich even admits that he was "approached" by these guys to write the book:

“Two of the founders pitched me on, the story and it seemed like a blend of “21” and “The Social Network” so that’s why I got excited,” said Mezrich, who wrote the books on which those movies were based.

http://www.boston.com/names/2013/06/...enL/story.html

[haleylh]

Mezrich responded with this nonsense, and subsequently vanished. I don't think he'll be back.

Ok, lots of posts, too many to try to respond to right now, but first off, let me start by saying I agree with many of these points concerning the end game at AB/UB vs Pokerstars; in the book I think it's clear (though many of you seem to disagree) that Black Friday left the players devastated because the business, due to prohibition-like persecution, was being run using overseas, shady payment processing, with no regulations protecting player money; the nature of the payment system was inherently flawed because of these complex steps the companies had to take to get money in and out of the US via these phony 'companies' (i.e. the ones selling nonexistant golf balls, flower delivery, etc,). I think there's a pretty good explanation on this link:

http://www.billrini.com/2011/05/12/p...imple-version/

that seems, to me, to explain some aspects of what was going on in all of these companies, and why PokerStars was able to pay back accounts while other companies couldn't. This isn't the kind of writing I do, and it wouldn't fit in the kind of book I write; but I'm sure many of you can go even farther to explain that aspect of how things went bad. The broad strokes, in my opinion, are how i described it- and I maintain that the blame should be aimed at the DOJ and UIGEA for setting this all in motion and creating this prohibition atmosphere. But I don't have a horse in this race, you can blame whoever you'd like. Scott and Hilt maintain that for the final several years of the business they had zero control of the company, they were not shareholders, directors, executives, consultants, etc. Pete, Garin and Brent were still involved but only as employees. I assume this won't convince people or keep the blame from flowing their way, but it does seem to me that the notion that people lost money because these guys were "cheats" is based more on emotion than on fact. The cheating and Black Friday are two separate events, involving different casts.

Most of the other comments seem to either be attacks on my style of nonfiction- which i understand, it's not for everyone- or a furious calling out of the AP 'founders'; specifically, Scott, and then after that, I think the brush seems to have a pretty wide stroke); related to the AP cheating scandal. I'm not here to defend them, again, I don't have a horse in that race, and personally i don't think the book paints anyone as a saint, this is simply the characters built via interviews, as they are, in their own words. I agree with everyone that the cheating was indeed a scandal, that the bones of that story are in the book, and that the more complex intricacies of that story are still to be told. I believe that part of the book is handled appropriately, but others can certainly go deeper and dig for more facts. In any event, I am not an investigative journalist, and I have always been perfectly clear about what I write, and how I write it. Narrative nonfiction- true stories written in a thrilleresque style; some of you will enjoy it, some will not.

Again, best, hopefully more to come:

Ben Mezrich

Bill Rini was on 2+2 within hours to disavow the conclusions Mezrich drew from Bill's work.

Let's see, what else is new? A major review declaring the awesomeness of the book appeared as a full-page story in yesterday's Boston Globe, so I contacted the writer (a freelancer) and four editors there. The writer contacted me back, while the editors haven't, though since that's Mezrich's home city I would expect the fluffiest overall reception for the book there. One of those editors must have forwarded the complaint on to Mezrich, because within two hours there were three new Tweets from Mezrich fired in my direction. One of those complimented me on my top-notch investigative work, so I replied that that was the same work he portrayed as false in his own book.

All fun, all in a day's work in outing a literary liar. The object remains to make a big enough stink to be noticed, so then the poker world's complaints about AP and this horrible rewriting of history can be seen.

[BeerAndPoker]

Off topic slightly but Brent Beckley is supposedly out of jail.

http://www.casinos-online.co.uk/news...c-out-of-jail/

[Dan Druff]

9 of 10 parts are up.

Good read!

http://www.flushdraw.com/news/ben-me...-of-deception/

[Lurker1998]

Usually these authors have book signing tours and go to book stores all around and show up at local news stations.......maybe there should be an organized hecklers union to make sure he gets a "warm" reception every place he shows up to try selling his book

[Dan Druff]

Here is an idiotic interview with someone from CalivinAyre.com.

Looks like he got hair style tips from Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

http://calvinayre.com/2013/06/14/pok...view-bl-video/

[haleylh]

I'm hoping Druff won't mind me putting up links to each of the ten parts in the series, for easy reference. The meat of it comes in parts 3-6, plus part 9, though every entry has something juicy, blatant or hilarious within it.

Part 1: The Elements of Deception

Part 2: The Imperative Blackjack Omission

Part 3: The Biggest Lie about the Plane-Crash Story

Part 4: Return of the Unnamed Low-Level Employee

Part 5: The Scandal Timeline Falsification

Part 6: Ignoring Scott Tom's Funds-Transfer Incrimination

Part 7: The Payment-Processing and Banking Falsifications

Part 8: The Ridiculous Lifestyle Justifications

Part 9: Rehashing a Faked Corporate Sale

Part 10: Assorted Hilarities, Links and Reviews

I think stage two to getting the book and Mezrich justifiably discredited is to now take the most important of these things and keep putting them in front of mainstream outlets.

P.S. And thank you all for those who have visited and said kind things or offered constructive criticism. If you want to keep visiting Amazon and upticking mine and the other genuine reviews, I'd be very pleased by that.

[nutty007]

Excellent job as always Haley, thanks

[Hockey Guy]

Part 11 is up:

http://www.flushdraw.com/misc/ben-me...ews-interview/

[haleylh]

Part 11 is up:

http://www.flushdraw.com/misc/ben-me...ews-interview/

There are actually a couple of new things in there about the AP story which I don't think were publicly known, such as that Scott and the Hilt and the boys were planning a land-based casino complex in the Caribbean. One thing most casual observers don't understand is that of the two situations, UB and AP, the far larger theft occurred at AP. However, most of that larger theft was done against the company's other shareholders, with only an unknown few million being stolen from players directly.

[chinamaniac]

[superallah]

love your work haley.