Joined: May '13
Location: Mauritius
Age: 32 (M)
Posts: 2688
Wow sick and sad story but when you are getting cheated, your basic instinct will tell you that it is happening.
Great read from him to know that something was going wrong and he emailed poker stars support to get the money back and thanks to pokerstars internal review he got his money back and this is good news for everyone playing poker.
Because if something happens you can be sure that pokerstars will look into it, they are the best poker site at the moment!!
There are lots of those things happenings,. have you heard about the hotel problem where laptop dissipated and appeared 5 minutes later? Have not read all the post, so might have miss it. But does someone know what happened?
Joined: May '09
Location: India
Age: 37 (M)
Posts: 4873
hey dlkiv
@peter- thanks and nice to know you enjoyed ur trip to india. but what u seen is just one aspect of india, we hav lot of diversity and lots of ppl too, lol
Joined: Dec '12
Location: Bulgaria
Age: 47 (M)
Posts: 1022
Posted by Heskor:
There are lots of those things happenings,. have you heard about the hotel problem where laptop dissipated and appeared 5 minutes later? Have not read all the post, so might have miss it. But does someone know what happened?
Hi Heskor,
Thanks for the tips! I didn't know anything about this, but I found the info and now I will publish it here. It is quite a new story from 16th of September 2013.
This thread is becoming to publish various poker & weird cases around the whole globe! Thanks to all mobsters who suggested different cases to be published here. This is going to be a very long post as well.
Ok, here we go:
========================================================== Mandavia and Others Affected By Alleged Laptop Scam in Barcelona; Koon in Deauville ==========================================================
About two weeks ago, we learned of an alleged laptop scam at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona during the first stop of Season 10 of the European Poker Tour. It began when Finnish high-stakes pro Jens “Jeans” Kyllönen took to TwoPlusTwo to tell a wild story about his laptop disappearing then randomly reappearing in his hotel room, and fellow high-stakes player Ignat "0human0" Liviu having a similar encounter.
Since the news broke, Kyllönen has been in contact with Ritz-Carlton, the parent company of the Arts Hotel, and they sent the following message to the Finn:
"Dear Mr Kyllönen,
We have received your comments, thank you for sharing your concerns with us.
First of all, I would like to assure you that we have all been taking your incident very seriously from the first moment. I sincerely regret that you felt we were not responding adequately to the issue. There have been different parties involved at the highest level, and we are taking all the necessary measures to avoid any inconvenience and maintain the highest level of security within the hotel. We are extremely appreciative and respectful of your responsibilities and the stakes involved in your situation.
Protecting privacy, security and comfort for our guests is our highest mission, rest assured that our teams are dedicated to meeting strict standards in our day-to-day operations and will continue to do so. I am concerned that we have lost your confidence in our brand and truly hope that we will have the opportunity to regain it in the future.
No new information in Kyllönen's case has been released.
Other players have stepped forward with similar stories, including Ankush "pistons87" Mandavia. Mandavia states that his room at the Hotel Arts received numerous random calls and their cards wouldn't work sporadically. After the festival was over, Mandavia's friend "SPEKTAH" discovered that his laptop was no longer password protected and then he received a blue screen. He can't start windows on his laptop.
Chanracy Khun, not knowing about the alleged laptop scam, tweeted that he too was receiving a blue screen on his laptop. He also found the program Splashtop, which allows mobile devices to view and operate your laptop or desktop, installed.
Low-stakes player "yaf" says that he also had a strange run-in at the Arts Hotel. He claims that one day he called his room looking for his girlfriend, and the line was busy. Confused, he went up to his room only to find a hotel worker leaving his room. When asked why the person was in his room, the hotel worker said that he was changing a lightbulb. The worker didn't have an old bulb in his hand nor was there an old bulb in the trash. "Yaf" followed up with the hotel, and they said they would send him an email by Sept. 9 or 10 after investigating the issue. He has yet to receive an email.
In April, Jason Koon posted that his laptop was hacked at EPT Deauville. While staying at the PokerStars recommended hotel, Koon came back to find that the password on his laptop was erased. Afterwards he was challenged by "PookLook2" to $1,000 and $5,000 heads-up sit-n-gos on Full Tilt Poker. The Swedish account, which had a previous average buy-in of $15, won $48,000 from Koon.
============================================================ High-Stakes Poker Players Allegedly Targeted in Laptop Scam in Barcelona; 16th of Sept.2013 ============================================================
Poker players staying at the Arts Hotel in Barcelona are urged to reformat the hard drive of their laptops after it was confirmed that at least two high-profile players had their machines compromised. Jens “Jeans” Kyllönen, a Finnish high-stakes pro, warned fellow poker players about the problems he had faced when returning to his room at the Arts Hotel.
For now both for me and ignat liviu(0human) the same thing happened room key doesnt work, go down to reception for a new key, come to the room to notice the laptop missing, go back down, in less than 10min go back up, and the laptop has reappeared. We are for sure not the only ones. Tell everyone you know at barcelona arts to not play on their laptops.
Ill post a complete story about these sickening last days in a day or two. Just posting this quickly from my ipad to warn everyone.
Shortly after Kyllönen’s post, PokerStars’ Lee Jones posted in the thread confirming that Kyllönen’s story was true. Jones also gave some basic security advice to laptop users.
Hi folks -
Unfortunately, the OP is accurate. We're only aware of two cases, but obviously there could be more. Our security manager is working with the Hotel Arts security people to find out who did this. In the meantime:
• If you're staying at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, please store your laptop in the room safe. If it won't fit in the room safe, buy a laptop cable lock (available at any computer store) and lock your laptop to something in the room. If you can't do that, take your laptop with you when you leave the room.
• Change the password on your laptop right now.
• We strongly encourage you to run virus/trojan detector software on your computer before using it for any online play.
• I know it's a hassle, but wiping the computer clean and reinstalling everything before you play online poker with it would not be a terrible idea.
We're very sorry about this; everybody on our staff and at the Hotel Arts is taking the situation seriously. We have the Barcelona police involved too.
We'll keep you updated as soon as we know more. For now, please be hyper-vigilant and hyper-careful about your laptop.
Best regards,
Lee Jones
Earlier this afternoon, Kyllönen started a second thread, this one detailing what he calls his “unbelievable EPT Barcelona story.” It is a title worthy of its description; Kyllönen’s story is unbelievable. While you can read Kyllönen’s story, we have pulled a few cliff notes for you to mull over.
• Kyllönen busts from the EPT Barcelona Main Event and returns to his hotel room to discover his room key does not work.
• Reception fixes his key and Kyllönen returns to his room to discover his laptop is missing.
• Kyllönen narrows the cause of the missing laptop down to housekeeping moving it or his friend and roommate borrowing it.
• Kyllönen checks with his roommate, who is playing cash games in the casino, and discovers his friend does not have Kyllönen’s laptop.
• Kyllönen returns to his room to discover his laptop has been returned.
• Kyllönen turns on his laptop and is greeted with the Windows Restore screen, suggesting something had been installed on his machine and caused an error, or someone was trying to uninstall everything and cover their tracks.
• Kyllönen goes to dinner, returning to find his room key does not work again. Once gaining access to his room, Kyllönen discovers his laptop is missing again.
• Later that evening, Kyllönen’s laptop is returned after it was apparently found at the hotel reception desk. The hotel later changes this story, saying that the laptop was handed to an employee on a floor of the hotel where the security cameras were allegedly not working. • PokerStars security offers to help.
• Kyllönen receives two strange phone calls to his room a few hours apart.
• The hotel’s head of security, who does not speak English, seems rather unhelpful and attempts to play down the situation.
• Hotel security provides an entry log for Kyllönen, but gives him false information on how to decipher the log. This may have been unintentional.
• Hotel security places the blame on Kyllönen’s roommate. Kyllönen backs his friend 100%.
• Kyllönen deciphers the entry log and discovers that whoever gained access to his room entered and left mere minutes before Kyllönen returned to his room, leading Kyllönen to believe the culprit could have been in his room while Kyllönen was present.
• Kyllönen meets fellow high-stakes specialist Ignat “0human0” Liviu in the hotel’s elevator. Liviu informs Kyllönen that his laptop has also been stolen.
• Liviu says the hotel told him of a similar case but had dismissed it as a “guy's friend messing around,” but had video evidence of someone entering Liviu’s room.
• Meetings with the hotel and security are scheduled.
At time of writing, the outcomes of the aforementioned meeting are unknown, but PokerNews will surely keep its readers up-to-date with any new information that we discover.
We urges poker players to protect their belongings to the best of their ability at all times; they are your responsibility. Keep your laptop with you at all times. Otherwise, lock them securely in the safes provided. Also, be vigilant. If you see anyone acting suspiciously, report it immediately to a member of the hotel staff.
UPDATE (Friday at 2 p.m. ET): (Another poker forum) Chad Holloway reached out to Ignat "0human0" Liviu to hear his side of the story.
Here is what Liviu told us:
"I can tell you and confirm that this happened to me. I went to my hotel room and the key wasn't working. I went down to [get a new key], went back to the room and saw that my laptop was missing. I then went to reception, told them what happened, went back at my room and the laptop was left in front of my room. They cracked my password; I don't know what else they did but for sure I will not use it anymore. At the security of the hotel we were able to see the guy on tape — a skinny guy at 1.7 or 1.8 meters that I don't recognize. So for sure there is this guy or a group that try to hack the computers of the high stakes players. I believe this happened to many players but I was lucky that I came back to the room and see the laptop missing. Anyway, PokerStars security is working with the security of the hotel try to find the guy. I don't know what else can be done."
============================================================ Posted by Jeans, Scandinavian Superstar, 09-06-2013, 10:19 AM (another poker forum) ============================================================
I'm going to write down the whole EPT Barcelona hotel arts story. This has been one of the most disturbing things I've gone through in my life. Please read the entire story before replying, I will answer questions I feel deserve to be answered. I have not had time to read the replies to my earlier thread.
It all started with me busting out of the main event day 2 fairly early, around 15:30. I walk straight to my room to go online and surf the internet for a while. When I get to the room my key is not working. I go down to the reception and they sync my key. I get back to the room to find out my laptop is not on the table where I left it. I have a very big and heavy fuijitsu celsius laptop, so it's usually very easy to see. They have cleaned the room so I assume the cleaning lady has moved it somewhere. I do look everywhere multiple times but just can't find it.
I'm staying with my friend Henri in the same room, and I can only think of two options, he has borrowed the laptop (I don't know why he would) or it has been stolen. However how could it get stolen so it must be him borrowing it. My phone hasn't been working for a few days but he told me he was going to play the cash games at the casino (very close to the hotel, basically one big complex) so I walk over there to ask him about the laptop. He says he doesn't know anything about it, but tells me his key wasn't working either which sounded like a pretty weird coincidence(he also played day 2 of the main event but busted 2 hours before me) so I walk back to my room to have a better look just incase.
I get into the room and boom, the laptop has reappeared on the table, exactly how I left it this morning before going to the tournament. My heart jumps, my mind is racing, for a second or two I'm doubting my sanity. Then I remember a clear photograph from my memory how the laptop charger was laying loosely alone on that table just less than 10min ago. There is 0.001% the laptop was laying on that table at that time. This is when I get scared. Someone has been in my room during this short period of time, for what I know he could be hiding under the bed or in the bathroom right NOW. I quickly run out of the room and take the elevator to the reception. I tell them what happened and they bring me this Guest Relations Supervisor, Laia.
At this point we recode both mine and my friends keys, and Laia says that even if someone had the copy of our keys or some other way access to our room, now it would be impossible(and as will be mentioned in a moment, not too long after, the room was broken into again). She tells me they will check the cameras but it will take a while. I go back up to my room to check my computer (it was working perfectly normal the day before, and it did require a password to enter). I turn it on to see it going to black screen:
So now I was a 100% sure of what is going on. I go to have dinner with a friend of mine, probably like 1 and a half hours later I come back to the reception. Laia informs me that the cameras in my corridor were not working and have not been for a week. I'm stunned but somehow I had a feeling something like this was this was the case, it couldn't be that easy. They tell me they will investigate the matter, and we agree to have a meeting with laia and some security manager tomorrow at 12, I get a feeling they are not taking me seriously. I go back to my room still shocked, only to find out my key is not working again. Then back to the reception where laia still is, I tell her the key didn't work and ask for it to be synced. She does that and tells me she will come up with me to check the key. We get into the room, and the laptop has gone missing AGAIN.
I'm in complete shock, do not have words to describe the feeling. We look through the entire room but nothing to be found. Laia calls the security about this, and has me and my friend transferred two floors up to a suite. We again agree to meet at 12 tomorrow morning. I walk back to the casino cash game area to talk to my friend about what has happened, and that I need to borrow his laptop to close down all my online poker accounts. He tells me we should just completely change the hotel just to be sure, this all is too scary.
We go to the reception and ask for laia to tell her this. She tells us she has informed the security guys to look extra carefully at our corridor, even during the nighttime. We agree that's good enough when suddenly laia gets a call. She talks spanish for a while and asks me what model my laptop is, fuijitsu? I tell her yes. She tells me someone found it at the hotel lobby and the security has it now. She asks us to wait and goes to get it. She does return with my laptop.
This is just really weird, why leave it in the hotel? Why not just throw it in the sea when they realized their operation had failed. This later became pretty clear, the fact that nothing had gone missing made this investigation so much harder to do, people did not realize how serious this thing was. Oh and now the computer starts and goes to windows perfectly, the only thing is it does not ask for any password anymore. At this point I also tell my friend Ville Wahlbeck, a pokerstars pro about this thing who then forwards it to pokerstars.
I go to the pokerstars staff room close to the tournament area, everyone is very friendly and helpful, the it-guy offers to check my laptop which I let him but tells me this is not his speciality. He doesn't find anything but tells me if someone cracked the password it's very likely they know enough to delete the system logs and all the traces aswell. I explain the situation to one of the staffmembers who sends the story as an email to pokerstars security. Now however we talk about this whole thing with my friend alot before going to bed and are very confident that this will get solved, the lobby is full of cameras so we will see how the laptop ended up where it did. The elevators are full of cameras and have a very small time interval so we should see a guy carrying a huge laptop. All in all we just have big expectations from tomorrows meeting at 12.
During this night something very weird happens that hasn't ever happened to me before in any luxury hotel. Me and my friend wake up to a room phonecall at 5:30 saying "Your taxi is ready" I ask what taxi - "the taxi to the airport" - i ask "with whos name?" - no name, just the room number, I tell the guy on the phone haven't ordered any taxi and the call ends. It could be we are just imagining, we were extremely paranoid at this point, but my friend said he thought the guy on the phone did not sound like a hotel employee because of the way he talked, it was not in that usual polite way but actually fairly rude one.
We wake up again to the phone ringing at 9:30. I answer and there is a voice saying "do you want to make business" I answer "What" - again "do you want to make business" - "Huh about what?" - "About the women" I just answer "no" and hang up. Now we are both too upset to get anymore sleep. For us it already seems clear someone from the hotel staff is in on this, so they can easily find out to which room we have moved. Now these calls could obviously be a coincidence aswell but lay them behind your ear for a while as my story continues.
The time is passing by so slowly but finally it is 11:45 and we decide to go down already to ask for laia. I've also asked Ville Wahlbeck to join us, as I know he is good to deal with these kind of situations. He also told me pokerstars will have a separate meeting with the hotel later this day. She is ready and she is with an old guy she presents as the security guy. This man does not speak any english and laia will translate both ways.
Within the first few minutes it is very clear he is not here to help us. He is here to make this thing go away, anything we try to bring him he comes up with some weird explanations. At one point he basically says "Nothing has gone missing, you already got a room upgrade and free roomservice, what more do you want?" Firstly I go straight to the point, I tell him so the laptop was found in the lobby, which is ful of cameras, did you find the guy who was with it? He answers that the laptop was not actually found in the lobby, but someone had brought it to some hotel employee in the second floor, and in that place the cameras did not work.
We three just look at eachother stunned, this is so laughable. I ask him if it's just these cameras not working or how many are not working right now to which he responds that 8 cameras. If this is true, it is pretty shocking for a 5 star luxury hotel to have this kind of a hole in their security system, or it could just be a lie because they were very unwilling to help us and it was just an easy way to not have to check the footage, or the final option, that someone from the staff is hiding something. I then tell him ok but you have cameras in the elevators, he tells me there are so many people in this hotel it's impossible look through all the footage, I try to tell him it is a very short interval when the guy was in my room but he is not listening.
The only thing they provide us with is a door entrylog to our room, which is fairly confusing, he talks about how the codes change when you go to the reception to resync the key, there is three different codes on that paper and he explains this third one is my friends new code for his key.
Everything of this is so confusing and we are already so tilted we didn't look at this too closely until later with my friend, and realized they had explained the codes wrong to us. So there was two options, a guy from the security personnel could not read his own hotels security code, or they were intentionally trying to trick us. However I will get back to this in more detail later in this story. We know this meeting is not leading anywhere and pokerstars probably will be able to pressure them better or somehow explain the seriosity of the situation so we decide the meeting is over.
I'm mentally crushed. I don't believe what just happened in the last 30 minutes. Everything was so clear before we entered that meeting, we thought there was close to no chance this would not get resolved. I however have hopes that pokerstars will deal with this properly.
I wait and after sometime after 17:00 I get a text from a pokerstars rep saying the meeting was finished. That the "hotel changed their view about the cameras" (still not sure what this means, certainly not our rooms corridor cameras, probably about the ones when the laptop was found the second time, but wtf how do you change your view, you mean lied at first), and that the hotel is reviewing the footage now and will update us later tonight.
The casino is also going to review the footage as they have to ensure my friend was plaing the cash games, and that the head of arts security has agreed this is a major breach in security.
I'm ecstatic, I thank them and send the exact cash game table where my friend was sitting so we can get him out of the picture. I wait and around 21:00 I get a text from another pokerstars rep saying that the hotel has to make a full investigation and will give the report tomorrow morning. I go back to the room with very high hopes for tomorrow. We also tell the reception to not let any calls through to our room during the night.
We wake up at 11:00 to the alarm clock and no updates yet. I go to the pool to wait and ask the pokerstars rep a few times but no updates. At some point I hear the hotel and stars have a new meeting to see the report. I wait and wait and after 21 in the evening they finally have news for me and tell me I have to come alone no exceptions.
I try to explain this concerns my friend just as much as myself, his laptop could also be in danger but she insists. We walk to the pokerstars staff room where I meet the pokerstars security manager. We sit down and he tells me "your friend might not be as good of a friend as you think he is".
I know this friend of mine very well, we travelled two months in south america last winter, he hangs around my house, he has had so many better spots do this to me that I don't really take this seriously. I assume the stars security manager has some heavy proof, however he shows me some notes about the same door entrylogs we saw in that meeting earlier.
The hotel seems to have convinced him of what they tried to show us, even after they had been caught lying before. This is basically all he has, and then also that the cameras were working in the second floor where the hotel claimed the laptop was found, but when he checked the footage nothing happened there, so he was going to look into that aswell.
I did explain that there is a very very veeery low % that my friend is behind this, and that I thought you already checked the cameras that he was playing in the cash games, but he had not. He also did not know at which cash game table my friend had been sitting at even though as I wrote earlier I texted this to a pokerstars representative who answered the text with "thanks, that helps alot".
I also said my friend Ilari Sahamies was sitting at the same cash game table and had told me that my friend had been there the entire time. He wrote down Ilari as a witness some paper. I then asked if we could focus on what we will do after you check the cameras in case my friend is not the one who did it, like check the 10 minute interval from the elevators when my laptop for the first time had reappeared. He seemed very busy and in a hurry the entire meeting and said that he will first check the cash game cameras for my friend and then tomorrow go from there if he is not the suspect.
In my childish mind I had imagined like a team of multiple pokerstars security guys investigating this putting huge pressure on the hotel... But I do sincerely think he was trying to do his best, he just had his hands full with the tournament security. I feel like pokerstars should've either put someone else on this case or someone on the job he normally has so he could put more time on this case. In less than 30 minutes of the meeting starting he had to go.
I was CRUSHED.
I can't remember the last time I've felt like this. My legs were shaking and I was ready to vomit at any second. I didn't believe this, it all seemed like some kind of sick twisted joke. I ran into Juha Helppi at the casino entrance where he asked how it went (I had told most of the finnish guys at some point in this situation about what was going on) I told him about this last meeting and he couldn't believe it either.
We just could not understand when something so clearly had happened and we had very exact times on everything in a hotel full of cameras that this could just be sweeped under carpet by bureaucracy.
He saw how crushed I was and I told him I had no more energy to deal with this, that I was going to take a flight back home to Finland the next morning and just be in touch through the phone with the pokerstars security manager. My hopes for anything to happen were very low. There was no talk of getting the police involved anymore.
This is basically where the story was supposed to end, I had it pictured in my mind already, perhaps in an even more negative tone, was going to write it the second I got home to Finland. At this point I think it's good to go through the door entrylog, as my friend was smart enough to take a picture of it.
I'm jumping a bit in the timeline, as me and my friend started looking at this log just before going to bed this same evening, and it actually made total sense. This leaves two options. The security guy we had the meeting with was either incompetent and could not read his own hotels security logs, or he was lying to us:
It starts with my friend busting out of the tournament, he tried to enter the room at 13:32 with his key 45D787. The last attempt is at 13:32:21, he takes the elevator down to the reception and 2 minutes 30 seconds later at 13:35:57 he is back at the door and it unlocks for his key 45D787. As you can see the code did not change when he went to the reception to get it resynced.
20 minutes later the room is unlocked for maid service (which we do not suspect had anything to do with it). But here is the interesting part: The key number 3EDC24 is neither of ours that attempts to enter the room for the first time at 14:51:04. At this time my friend is playing cash games and I'm still in the main event, so this can easily be proved with cameras that pokerstars also has access to (they had access to the entire casino cameras). At 14:54:26 some sort of service personnel enters the room is fairly lucky as it seems to buy me 20 minutes of time.
15:19:06 you can see he finally gets access to my room, 3 minutes before this he has unsuccessfully tried to enter again a few times.
I arrive at my room door at 15:40:01 with my key 45D009, my last attempt being at 15:40:44 before going down to the reception to resync my key and arrive back to the room at 15:44:29.
As you can see the key number once again does not change. It seems the minibar service had been there 2min30sec earlier but noone was there when I entered.
This is the time I notice the laptop is missing.
I search for it for 9 minutes and when I'm leaving the room at 15:53:12 I remember testing to see if my key works which shows in the log as another unlock.
I walk to the casino to ask my friend if he has seen my laptop.
During this 3EDC24 enters my room at 16:02:18. Only 2min 41 seconds before I am back in my room and notice the laptop is there (16:04:59). Which is pretty ****ing scary. He could have even been hiding in the bathroom as I was in the room.
It took me and my friend 5 minutes to figure out this when noone was there trying to tell us what everything meant.
Obviously we can't be 100% sure this analysis is correct but seems pretty damn clear to me. This can also be proved for sure with the lobby and elevator cameras.
And it is this exact log that made the hotel blame my friend and pokerstars to suspect my friend which is pretty ****ing absurd, when even if you don't understand the log you could have synced the times with the cameras to get the whole picture.
They somehow in a very unclear way told that according to the logs the only other person who entered the room after me was my friend, and that his keys code somehow had changed after the resync. (Even if it was true that the resync changes the code, there should be 2 keycodes that tried to enter the room unsuccessfully, and then 2 new keycodes, that then successfully unlocked the room, which there clearly was not.
So back to the story.
I was walking from the casino to my hotel room just crushed. Tired of picking up the soap from the prison shower floor. As a pokerplayer I do not believe in anything supernatural but this had to be faith.
In the hotel elevator a guy looks at me and says hey jeans.
I don't recognize him at first and say hey, whats up, who are you.
He answers "I'm Ignat, 0human0, how are you?"
Even this is so sick, as I almost always just make the standard (I'm fine, what about you?) answer but this time I was just too sick of everything so I answered "Not good, my laptop was stolen".
He looks at me with a surprised face and says his was also.
And then we find out the exact same thing had happened, but for him it was today, two days later than my incident.
He returns to his room from the beach, his key doesn't work, he gets a new key to notice his laptop is not in his room. He goes down to the reception to complain and comes back up only to notice that the laptop has been returned.
He also says there was 2 phonecalls made to his room. One asking when he wanted the room to be cleaned, to which he had answered in 2 hours. Another one after that 2 hours, where when he answered nothing was said, and the call just ended.
So very likely someone checking if he still is in his room or not. I asked him if he had been told about my case. He said no, he said "they did tell me there was some small similar case but it was just the guys friend messing around" .
He also told me that they had caught the guy on tape entering his room.
This gave me a huge wave of new energy. I immediately took the elevator down with him, told him that we had to go see the pokerstars security manager, he was still there and for the first time I felt he took this thing as seriously as it should be taken.
He came with us to the reception to talk with whoever ignat had been talking to and after nothing more could be done he said he would be back there 8 in the morning to continue solving it. He would call us right after he has news.
We went back to our room with my friend and just talked for a few hours about this whole sick thing.
It feels like this could only happen in a movie.
Then we started talking about the entrylogs that I analyzed a bit earlier in this post and took a look at the picture he had of them. It really took us less than 5 minutes to make sense of them, and I don't think we would have ever looked at them again had I not ran into Ignat.
And here we are, the next day now. I just spoke with the manager who told me he has a meeting with pokerstars at 14:00 and 15:00 with the hotel. I told him we had solved the entrylog and it would help alot with the meeting with the hotel but he did not have time to go through that.
So this is the entire story 100% as I remember it writing this in my hotel room. I believe that this has happened to multiple players, me and ignat only happened to be lucky enough to come back to our room at the right time.
We both also had it in common that both need a password to enter the laptop, otherwise it would probably have taken them less time to fix the laptops. I also am still completely stunned at how this whole thing almost got sweeped under the carpet with all the evidence, in an European Union country at a 5 star luxury hotel.
I will write more when I hear news, or if I come up with something I forgot. Feel free to post questions and I'll try to answer them when I have time. If your question from my other thread was not answered in this post feel free to post it again.
If this investigation does not lead to any results, we think it is unacceptable for pokerstars to organize the event at the same place next year.
Anyone good with computers? Since coming back from hotel Arts my comp freezes and restarts with this msg.
============================================================ Posted by NovaSky, 04-07-2013, 07:40 PM (another poker forum) ============================================================
Originally Posted by NovaSky
I contacted FTP and begged them to do an investigation. They ended up freezing the accounts after telling me 3-4 times that there was no funny business going on. Even after the 2 days of checking things out they told me that there was 0 proof I was hacked.
it was PookLook2 who got me.
FWIW: When I was in Deauville playing the EPT i was staying in the Stars recommended hotel. One night I returned to my hotel room to see that my login password on my macbook was erased. It is almost impossible that someone could have physically got to my comp but something happened. No money was gone and no passwords were changed so i assumed i was just being crazy. I think its very likely he was there and got me. a few weeks later pooklook found me in 1ks and asked me to play higher after a few. I obviously accepted since he was playing insanely fishy. He wiped me for 10 buy ins and bounced.
sorry my grammar is so bad i have slept in 2 days and am playing mtt at the moment but wanted to get the word out.
============================================================ Posted by yaf, 09-13-2013, 01:20 AM (another poker forum) ============================================================
Hello,
First lets me apologize for my bad english, I’m a French Canadian not totally bilingual despite my effort! :S So, here some informations that may be (maybe) added to this story, but I’m not sure as sometime I’m a lil bit paranoid. A thread similar of this one have been created on a French Canadian poker forum named PokerCollectif.com and I first posted here, but few members told me to that I should come and write it there so I’m doing it now. Hope it could help, nothing else… I don’t want to hurt in anyway PS or hotel Arts.
I guess I’m not a target for hackers as I’m not an high roller (I don’t play cashgame, only tourneys and sng around 100$...), but as I have a couple of pesos in my account and that money is important to me, I did care about this story when its have been bring to my attention at my last night at Arts Hotel. And as I cashed in at the tourney, I felt bad at this point as I reminded something shady.
The day the cash out has been confirmed, in a 20 minutes break, I was supposed to meet my gf at lobby, if she was not there, she were supposed to be at pool or room. So as I didn’t meet her at lobby, I used the phone of lobby to call the room but it was busy. It was impossible to my mind as we never ever use phone in room, so I decided to go up to my room. As I reached the door and finally open the door, an employee of Arts Hotel was exiting.
I had a bad feeling – can’t explain rationaly – but I remember asking him what he was doing and he told me he came to replace a light bulb in bathroom. But as I remember the fact, I’m sure he didn’t have a bulb light in his hand and also none were in the trashcan. He looked suspicious to me so I asked him his name, he gave me but I didn’t note and forget about it. Also, remember, I’m short on time and wanna find gf… And why does he needed to use the phone ??? So, thinking back to it after reading OP afraid me a bit…
I decided to report the fact to PS by mail and to an Arts Hotel employee at reception. PS acted professionaly with me, freezing my account till my return for security doing couple others good move for me. Arts Hotels employee was aware of the fact about hacking story and took good note of my story, witch one should have been monitored by security engineering or something like that the day after.
As I never asked for a bulb replacement, he told me that the request could have been made by a housekeeper ; they were supposed to look in the system if an employee has been mandated for that in the system and send me an email by the 9 or 10 september to confirm/infirm that fact. It’s the 13 today and no email received yet.
Maybe I’m totally out of the story, I let you judge about that. Some fact doesn’t coordinate with OP, ex: I’m not an high stack playa. Also, never my key needed a reconfiguration… Btw, my computer has not been hacked, but its irrevelant I think ‘cause it’s a ChromeBook running on Chrome OS and thats very solid versus hacker…
What ever. That’s my story, make your own tought. ============================================================
Well, Heskor these are the stories of the poker players who were playing in Season 10 of the European Poker Tour. As you already know they were in hotel Arts in Barcelona.
Hope you'll enjoy the read!
Well mobsters, the main conclusion which I took from all these hotel stories is that if someday someone of us decide to play in a live poker tournament event, when leaving the room, take your laptop with you and and leave it in the hotel SAFE at the reception.
Joined: Mar '09
Location: Greece
Age: 47 (F)
Posts: 14136
Managed to read it all today. Had read some parts of it in the past, like the one were discussing about hacking him. The good thing is that he got compensated from Poker Stars at the end. Wonder what would had happened if the scammer had made a cash out.
Joined: Dec '12
Location: Bulgaria
Age: 47 (M)
Posts: 1022
Posted by Mober: Managed to read it all today. Had read some parts of it in the past, like the one were discussing about hacking him. The good thing is that he got compensated from Poker Stars at the end. Wonder what would had happened if the scammer had made a cash out.
Hello Mober,
I am glad you red the whole story! Have you red the story about the missing computer from a hotel room? That happened to several poker players, some of them PRO. They installed virusses at their machines.
These are the stories of the poker players who were playing in Season 10 of the European Poker Tour. They were in hotel Arts in Barcelona. So, the news is from the last month and when you have free time you can read it as well.
