Backstory:
Tennis charities are serious business.
In December 2015, I made this post, which Mason has never forgiven.
The bolded part was done just now (not in the original post), and is the line which sent Mason over the edge.Most of the Mason discussion centered around the fact that he jumped to bash Negreanu and make him look like the bad guy in the Pokerstars situation, which was transparent and an asshole thing to do. If he didn't already dislike Negreanu, he wouldn't have said a word about it.
The 22Q donation as definitely a stab at Daniel. Mason is not known for his charity donations. He did this one because he wanted to show up Daniel. Believe me, Mason didn't give a shit that Jasep scammed 22Q, aside from the fact that it "proved" him right.
Mason did nothing innovative to make all the money he did from Two Plus Two, aside from being an early adopter of publishing poker book and running a poker forum. I give him credit for jumping into that early, but truthfully it was only a moderate income source until he lucked into poker blowing up more than 5 years later. Prior to the boom, he was just a small publisher in a small niche market.
At the time, I really didn't know Mason had a tennis charity. Why would I? I don't follow the guy's life very closely, because I care very little about him, outside of when I'm on 2+2.
Mason learned about my post a month later in January 2016, and was furious. He decided it was time to come forward and make a statement about the Mason and Charmaine Malmuth Foundation. He even conceded in his statement that he had made a policy "not to talk about our foundation", so why was he mad at me for not knowing about it?
But that's Malmuth Logic for you. He's a grumpy old man who always feels slighted by everything.
Anyway, Malmuth's post opened up another can of worms. Belly Buster discovered that the foundation's tax returns from 2011-2015 (the most current at the time) showed $0 in charitable disbursements!
This got Mason even angrier, and he was censoring all discussion of it on 2+2. After Larry Laffer kept making fake accounts on 2+2 to bring it up (not at my direction, btw), Mason finally had to address it. He stated that the tax returns were in error, and that the mistake had gone back 10 years (!!). I'm not sure why he didn't catch such an egregious error for 10 straight years on his own charity's tax returns, but that's what happened. I actually believe him.
Anyway, Mason remained extremely bitter about this, as is par for the course with him. He finally thought he found his opportunity to strike in 2017, when one of his mods noticed that I was copying and pasting various 2+2 posts to PFA, in an effort to have my own separate discussion about the topics.
This brought up an interesting legal question: Did I have the right to copy posts from 2+2 if they were written by third parties, provided those third parties didn't object? It turned out the answer was yes. 2+2's own terms of service state that they do NOT own the posts made by users. Thus, if they don't own the posts, they don't have a right to sue over such posts being copied.
Anyway, Mason's lawyer contacted me about this in 2017. I argued my point, which of course the attorney wouldn't concede (especially to a non-lawyer), but he also knew I was right.
Originally, they wanted me to stop copy-pasting 2+2 posts here, and to find and delete all instances of it occurring for the entire lifetime of PFA. Ummm.... that absolutely was NOT going to happen. I refused. Here is a pretty good article describing the situation, by Haley Hintze.
I told his attorney that I was willing to come to any reasonable agreement, but that I knew my rights. We finally came to one which was MUCH less restrictive, and was completely reasonable:
As you've seen, I've kept to this agreement.- TwoPlusTwo will no longer object to copy and pasting single posts to PokerFraudAlert, provided that the posts being copy/pasted involve scams, scandals, or frauds in poker.
- PokerFraudAlert agrees not to reproduce entire threads or back-and-forth conversations between posters on 2+2.
- PokerFraudAlert agrees to place a link back to the 2+2 thread when anything is copy/pasted here. (I was already doing this, anyway.)
- TwoPlusTwo makes the same agreement about PokerFraudAlert. PokerFraudAlert posts (including my own) may be copy/pasted to TwoPlusTwo, provided it's about scams/scandals/frauds, and may not contain back-and-forth conversations reproduced. A link will also be posted back to PokerFraudAlert.
- Both sites agree to notify the other if any posts are found violating the above agreements, and such posts will be removed.
- This agreement only involves posts going forward. Old posts will not be edited.
Here's the thread about the agreement, which Mason knew I would be posting at the time: https://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sh...-Mason-Malmuth
However, there was one other laughable piece of the agreement. I was told that Mason was still very upset with the thread which made fun of his "$0 disbursements" tax returns, and that he wanted me to make a statement that I believed the charity was legitimate. I agreed to this, but told the attorney I would only post what I really believed to be true. I told them what I would write, and they were okay with it. Here was the statement:
Finally, I wanted to say something about Mason's tennis charity. You guys know that I am always honest when I spot any kind of fraud or scam, and never hold back my true opinion. While I understood everyone's concern given the charity's tax returns which were found online, I honestly believe Mason's explanation that these were simply tax form errors. While I have criticized Mason for many things over the years, I have never believed he was a scammer or a dishonest person. It simply would not make sense for Mason to set up a phony charity and break federal law, simply to save a few thousand per year in taxes. My opinion is that Mason's tennis charity is legitimate, and this entire controversy was spawned by incorrectly filed paperwork by his accountant.
I did NOT agree to cease discussion of the tennis charity. I simply agreed that I would make a statement that I believed it to be legitimate, and that Mason's tax returns were simply in error as he claimed.
This is important, as you'll see soon.
Also, Mason surprisingly offered that I could return to 2+2. This was unexpected, because I hadn't asked for this. I assumed it was because the activity there was dying, and they badly need quality posters back. I accepted the offer, but expressed concern that Mason would attack me there, and then ban me when I'd respond (or he'd find some other petty reason to ban me, as he has in the past).
The attorney wrote, "Also, Mason agrees and gives you his word that once your ban is lifted on 2p2 you will not be banned in the future unless you break the 2p2 posting rules or this agreement."
I have kept to all terms of the agreement, and I have not broken 2+2 rules.
However, today I am banned. Why? Read on next post.