Friday, May 28, 2010

Just Conjecturin', Volume 18: Fakes a-Plenty Among the KGC 31

I'm jumbling my planned order of posts this fine Friday morning to address the news that Wicked Chops Poker is planning on releasing what is believed to be a partial list of 15 names/accounts associated with the online poker cheating scandal at UltimateBet spanning several years last decade. In its laughable "official" final report, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission cited Russ Hamilton as the chief perpetrator, and claimed there were 31 other people involved, without naming any of them. It was suspicious, to say the least, that the KGC would neither name the 31 nor provide any evidence to back up its claim that it had provided the list to law-enforcement authorities.

In the early part of 2010, a partial list containing 15 accounts was leaked out from Cereus. This leak was also suspicious, though an investigation into the accounts listed therein, done by me, showed that the accounts themselves were very real and were indeed part of the cheating scandal. I obtained this list just a couple of weeks ago. This may be the list WCP is planning on releasing, or they may have since then obtained a more complete list via the same source, due directly to the pressure I've been exerting.

The 15 accounts include 14 separate names, with one name (a real person very close to Russ Hamilton) being listed on two different accounts, but with different addresses and the addition of a middle initial in one of the names. The list does include either three or four real people, but the huge problem here is that most of this list is fakes: fake accounts with made-up names or phony addresses allegedly created at Russ Hamilton's behest, later to be used by Hamilton in the cheating.

Today it's time to publish the fakes, noting that all these names are supposed to have been included on the Kahnawake Gaming Commission's official list of 31 people connected to the cheating. The fact that many of these fakes are obvious casts even more suspicion on both the source of the leak and the KGC itself, since either, with even a modicum of effort, could have deduced the fakes and eliminated them from the list. (Or, conversely, published them with a grand proclamation of how things were being done in regard to the scandal.)

So here are the ten fakes:

Bill Gordon

User Id – 40018
Address: 1221 windbrook San Diego, California
Tele - No Number
Undetermined – 1221 is an invalid street number, but 11221 would be legit, no zip.

This is a play-money account, perhaps even of a real person, that was converted into a cheating account internally at a later date. All such low-ID accounts on the KGC list are of similar origin.


James Brunson

User Id - 966687
Address: 1444 Wagner Las Vegas, NEVADA 89134
Tele - No Number
Fake address (would be in the middle of I-15), wrong zip for street

Confirmed fake. If you’re going to have a lot of fakes, you may as well toss a “Brunson” in there for verisimilitude, right?


Jason Plunto

User Id - 1676953
Address: 2480 W. 99th Chicago, ILLINOIS 60402
Tele – No Number

Confirmed fake. Google sat maps show a house at this general location, but “Plunto” does not appear as a name in all of Chicago white listings and the houses in this vicinity front on a side street.


Frank Dursley

User Id - 1676958
Address: 2549 Maple Humeston, IOWA 50123
Tele - No Number

Fake address , confirmed fake


Rufus Black

User Id – 2422566
Address: 73 W 53rd Biloxi, MISSISSIPPI 39530
Tele - No Number

Confirmed fake.


Carol Plizga

User Id - 2510148
Address: 7006 grouse road las vegas, NEVADA 89134
Tele – 7023969970

Probable fake – Grouse St. (not "Road") w/ same zip code exists, but numeric addresses not in same range


Jason DelMonte

User Id – 2561615
Address: 78 Grainger Rd Evanston, ILLINOIS 60427
Tele - No Number
Fake address – zip wrong for Evanston, no such road

Confirmed fake


Thomas King

User Id - 2561621
Address: 301 Appleton Miami, FLORIDA 10234
Tele - No Number
Fake zip, fake street

Confirmed fake


Eli Argo

User Id - 2561631
Address: 604 e 23rd st grand rapids, MICHIGAN 70469
Tele - No Number
Fake address, fake zip

Confirmed fake


Spencer Price

User Id - 2641649
Address: 4044 Billings Canton, COLORADO 11111
Tele - No Number
False zip code, Canton, Co barely exists, and roads are numeric county roads

Confirmed fake

* * * * *

These are presented in ID # order for a reason. Notice the tight grouping associated with some of these IDs:

Jason Plunto: 1676953
Frank Dursley: 1676958

Jason DelMonte: 2561615
Thomas King: 2561621
Eli Argo: 2561631

It's no coincidence. These accounts were almost certainly created during two sessions when multiple accounts were being created via Hamilton's directives, and accounts near to these in numeric order could easily be checked to see if more fakes are unearthed. One they'll find for sure is the "Dan Francis" account associated with "ShaqTack" and others, which numerically fits right in with the Plunto/Dursley run:



The Francis grab comes from a 2+2 poster who saved the original "brainwashdodo" screen grabs; I'd love to acknowledge him but I cannot find his message this morning. (Contact me, please.) How the Francis account was missed or not included within the above list of 14-15 names remains beyond me, but it has been alleged to me that many fake accounts used in the cheating have not even been uncovered, and I now believe this claim. Again, it calls into question both the motives of the person who leaked the list and the laughable way in which the KGC report was constructed and presented to the public. It is true that most of the dollar value in cheating attributed to the fakes is probably accounted for by the names in this list, but the fact that the list itself is both so blatantly stuffed with the fakes and so obviously flawed makes its origins and motives suspect.

I'd love to see WCP release the full 31-name list next week, if indeed they have it; they may not. They can release the four real names on this list if they wish, or I can do it at a later date. I'm still researching to see if (a) all four are indeed real, and (b) exactly what benefit(s) they may have received from the cheating.

I know of approximately ten more of the real people who are supposed to be on the full KGC list of 31, but it is likely that the list will be as much a tool of business and political convenience as it is an attempt to get to the truth, and the complete list may well contain parties guilty of the cheating, parties guilty of other things, and perhaps even an innocent party or two.

And of course, it has parties that don't even exist. You now know about these.

(I hereby give permission for the list of ten accounts above and the Dan Francis screen grab to be distributed freely. -- HLH)

* * * *

P.S.: Phil Hellmuth is innocent in the cheating. He remained clueless about the entire scandal until it blew up behind his back, and to the best of my knowledge he still doesn't know jack about what really transpired. Has he been a silly frontman still looking to make a buck off his name? Sure, but that's just Phil.

* * * *

P.P.S.: Okay, so I can't count late at night after working all day. This is Volume 18, not 17. Any bets that the over/under on this series tops 40?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haley:

Does your source have the ability to see whether cashouts were ever processed to the fake names? If so, by what method? Method, not even being that important. If you can show that a payment was made to any of these fake names you can get to evidence that will spark the interest of the FBI. Also, having the timestamp of the transaction would be good

Anonymous said...

I would love to see how the cheating money was withdrawn. Bank wires? Neteller? What exactly? How and to whom the money was cashed out is a big piece of the puzzle seldom mention. Large cashouts had to be approved by upper management, and it would be very interesting to see the methods used to get the $$ off the site.

Anonymous said...

Perfect money laundering scheme. Own WU agent accounts at either convenience stores or check cashing operations.

That way the site can process WU transactions to false names and there wouldn't be any identification required to pick up the cash.

You could move and hide all of the corporate money in this manner.

Alex said...

^^^

I thought i recalled that one of the addresses that was linked to a superuser account led to an address that was a check cashing place in LV??!!? Someone would have to double check but i am confident that it was mentioned and a random poster who lived in LV drove by the place and it was shut down or something.

Alex said...

i remember someone saying that one of the superuser addresses went back to a check cashing place in LV. someone would have to check on that though

Anonymous said...

I believe you're correct AFast. At some point during the public investigation I also recall an account being linked to an address of an old rundown plaza in LV, where other then tinted window storefront a check cashing place was the only visible tenant.