IGGY at PokerWorks

“I’m going to give Susan a reply too, because I think she deserves a distraction from her PMS — you know, for all her years of service of being a royal bitch on this forum. But as for the rest of the haters, I’ll just address you all universally: you can all curl up and die for all I care.”
Robert Boyd

I thought I’d link up the entire RGP thread per Dutch’s brother and show how to make friends.
Pokerspot Software Now Opensource

Damn revisionist history. It’s insane. The reality is that it’s all documented on RGP in the archives - go read it for yourself. Too lazy? Good, that’s what I’m here for.

There’s ample threads, posts and columns about Russ & the PokerSpot debacle, but allow me to start off with this excellent article by Eric Rosenberg, with excellent linkage.

—

Russ “Dutch” Boyd to Open a New Online Card Room

The former owner of the now defunct PokerSpot.com has announced plans to open another online card room, a move that is getting strange looks from much of the poker playing community.

This story begins on August 17, 2000, when a post from “WJR” appeared on the poker newsgroup, rec.gambling.poker (RGP), stating that he was having trouble receiving his cashout from PokerSpot.com, a new online poker room. Shortly after, the post was replied to by Russ Boyd, CEO of PokerSpot. Boyd wrote, “…we did not receive your cashout request. I am not sure why, and we are still investigating, but we have no intention of keeping your money. This is a very isolated incident, and I think you’ll find very few complaints regarding our customer service.”

Ahh, but as time would tell, this was not an “isolated incident” and there were not “very few complaints”, there were many.

The posts on RGP started to build up. One after another complaining (and warning others) that their cashouts were not getting processed. And just as quickly as the complaints rolled out, so did the excuses from PokerSpot support, excuses like, “We are reworking our entire cash out system, and this has delayed all cash outs by a week or two.”

One PokerSpot member, John Buchanan, who played under the username “MS Sunshine”, claimed that Russ Boyd and PokerSpot owed him and his wife “over $56,000″.

What was going on at PokerSpot? Did Russ Boyd and company run off with the money? The players wanted to know.

In February of 2001, Russ Boyd finally came forward with another address to RGP:

“As many of you are aware, we’ve been faced with some recent problems at Pokerspot. … Due to a situation with Net Pro Ltd., the company that until recently processed our credit card deposits, a large amount of our funds, which includes player funds, has been stalled.” Boyd went on to say, “As far as money owed to players, Pokerspot will make good on all pending cashouts.”

But PokerSpot never did “make good” on all pending cashouts as Boyd promised. Some that did receive checks were out of luck when they reported that their checks failed to clear the bank.

In a recent email interview, Boyd said, “Net Pro told us that they hadn’t gotten the funds that they processed for us from their bank.” He says that after six weeks, Net Pro eventually avoided his calls and PokerSpot never saw any of the money that players had deposited. Boyd went on to tell us that many of the 1000 or so players were able to charge back their credit cards, but there was no way for them to claim any winnings that may have occurred.

This was not a new story. In fact, it was similar to the post that he had made in February 2001 on RGP. Boyd says that he is aware that much of the poker community doubts his story, “A lot of people naturally assume that I took all of that money and partied, buying a big house in the Caribbean and breast implants for a blonde girlfriend. But that isn’t true. When Pokerspot failed, it ruined me. I didn’t have a way to pay my rent, I didn’t have a job anymore, and I had no idea how I was going to turn it all around.”

Boyd says that he had filed a law suit against Net Pro to try and recover the funds, but claims that the company was judgment proof, “They didn’t have any money to collect.”

In our interview, Boyd never did discuss why he wasn’t up front with the players in the first place. He did not mention the excuses about not receiving cashout requests or his customer support team saying that the system was being reworked. Now, nearly three and a half years after we heard the first complaint about PokerSpot, Boyd is trying to get back into the online poker spotlight with the launch of a new card room called RakeFree.com.

While working as a consultant to a sportsbook who wanted to implement poker tables, Boyd says that he came up the new idea of a rake free card room, “I tried to get the sportsbook behind it, but they didn’t see the business sense in giving up a potential $50 million a year in rakes. But I thought it had a lot of potential, so I came back to the states to work on it in May.”

While the idea may have potential, Boyd realizes that he has an uphill battle to retake his place in the online poker world. Boyd said, “I can’t promise that Rakefree.com is going to be successful. I have a lot of critics who have made it clear that they would never play [at] a site I was involved in.”

Having graduated from law school when he was barely old enough to legally play poker, some believe that Russ Boyd is boy genius. He never did tell us whether he thought he was a that was true or not, but he did say, “I sometimes get real moments of clarity that even surprise myself.”

Perhaps it was one of those moments of clarity when Boyd tried to put himself in the shoes of his critics and said, “If I was on the outside looking in, I’d be skeptical too. And I wouldn’t be rushing to deposit money at Rakefree.com.

Article by Eric Rosenberg

—

Again, there are sooooooooo many threads to recount, I could easily fill a weeks worth of posts just focusing on this issue. What Boyd did is akin to “Check Kiting”. He knew there was no money to pay the withdrawals, so he kept accepting deposits to attempt to satisfy the withdrawals. Had he done this with a U.S. company, there would be no “Crew” and Russ “Dutch” Boyd would be in jail.

Think I’m being harsh? Think I’m a crackpot? Wait, don’t answer that last one.

Here is 2004 WSOP World Champ, Greg Raymer weighing in with an answer to a question about Russ:

—

http://www.liveactionpoker.com/articles/boyd/boyd-int/boyd-int.html

is supposedly his side of the story about what happened earlier. I’d like to know what is supposedly false in this story.

If its true, I don’t see where he “stole” any money. It just sounds like a cashflow issue that broke them when a business partner folded, and the corporation couldn’t pay off its debts, like often happens in
that situation.

What’s factually incorrect with “his story”?

———-

I’m most likely wasting my time talking to another Boyd shill, or Boyd himself in alias.

No, this type of thing does not happen every day in the business world.

Let’s say you’re going to set up a new business, as a general contractor. You sell shares of stock in your new company to investors. You also sell your business services to customers, who place orders with you to supervise construction of their buildings. Whenever you sign a contract with a customer, they are required to pay in advance for the work, starting with 10% immediately, and then they must continue to make advance payments in at least an amount deemed sufficient to cover next month’s expenses on your part.

Now the company folds. At the time, you had 10,000 shares of stock outstanding. You also had $100,000 in corporate debt, money or supplies lent to the company. You also had $200,000 in advance payments, the money of your customers which had NOT YET BEEN SPENT on their behalf. However, this money was gone, because you had been using it to pay for the debts of the corporation, that is, if you hadn’t used the customer’s money, the corporate debt would’ve been $300,000 instead of $100,000.

The money lost by the stock investors, that happens in the business world every day. The money lost by the banks and suppliers who lent you cash or supplies, that happens in the business world every day. YOUR illegal use of the customer advance payments for corporate debts, that is illegal, and while it happens a lot more than it should, it does not happen every day. The advance payments were made in trust, that money NEVER belonged to the corporation, it was supposed to have just been held for use in making payments for that customer’s projects, as the money was spent on their behalf.

That is what Dutch Boyd did. He took the money that player’s had in THEIR accounts, money that NEVER belonged to him or to Pokerspot, and used it to pay debts of Pokerspot. Then, when Pokerspot folded, the player’s money was gone, and their was nobody or nothing left to repay them. That makes him a thief.

I didn’t ever play at Pokerspot, and didn’t lose a penny. But many of my friends did. If I ever enter a tourney and am at the table with Dutch, well, I’ll be stuck there. But he will know what I think of him.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

——–

And my favorite thread on RGP is when Dutch asked WHAT THE HELL CAN I DO TO RECTIFY THINGS?

Gary Carson had been slamming Russ since 2000, when the very first smoke rings from the soon to be raging infernos were puffing.

But Paul Phillips gets in his two cents, responding to a Russ post. Italics are quotes from Russ’s prior post:

—

Given the circumstances, his “interview”, such as it was, made you look about as good as it was humanly possible for you to look; and you’re complaining? That takes some serious balls.

Not the good kind, incidentally.

>Perhaps the reason I didn’t explain the
>”reason I wasn’t upfront with players in the first place” was because I
>wasn’t aware the Net Pro problems were not a temporary problem.

More than one person has reported here that you assured them that their checks were in the mail. All lies. It was not the job of the players on your site to unravel the relationships between you and your partners. You
personally deceived them about the safety of their deposits and the status of their transactions. You cannot blame that on a third party.

>You’ve been accused of giving me some pretty softball questions in the
>interview and not digging to the real truth.

Well duh.

>Now it’s pretty clear to me that you most certainly did have an agenda…
>to paint my story as negatively as possible while still trying to appear
>as an objective reporter.

I don’t know how much extra effort you think that requires, but no matter how little, it’s less than you think. Sheesh, I read that “interview” and only came away with negative impressions of the “reporter”! And you don’t think it was fair to you. Wow.

—

And number #2 from my hero, Paul Phillips, responding to a direct question from Russ:

—

>So here’s what hasn’t been said before. I really am trying to correct my
>mistakes. So how do I do it? Seems to me that the two extremes are (1)
>taking out a great big life insurance policy and putting a gun to my head
>or (2) telling every Pokerspot player that I’ve washed my hands of it and
>this isn’t a mistake that can be corrected. So what would you do, Paul?

I wouldn’t be in your situation. Our lives don’t fall from the sky fully formed. They are products of our choices. Anyway, you’ve already said (2) several times, couched in the language of the consummate excuse maker.

If I were unlucky enough to inherit your life on some freaky friday, I would stop playing poker and stop trying to involve myself in poker businesses. You will never, ever outrun pokerspot. Everything you try to do in poker is destined for failure. I feel sorry for people who might go into business with you without realizing that. And you’re compounding your sins by inflicting yourself on others that way.

Is the universe of your ambition so narrow? What kind of person would continue to put all his effort into a field where he has earned so many opponents, when endless alternatives exist? It’s masochistic and it
smacks of an unhealthy desperation.

—-

I must have 1000 quality snippets from players. But I’ll have mercy on you, gentle reader, and just post a few. Get comfortable and prepare to read. I apologize for the scattered order, including direct posts from Russ himself as PokerSpot began encountering problems, but I think it’s better if I just dump it all here, instead of sorting and explaining. Enjoy:

—

Paul Phillips:

There have been ten zillion posts on rgp on this subject. He did not steal the money in the sense that he ended up with it (as far as I know). He did steal the money in the sense that he deceived trusting people for no reason other than his own greed, and those people ended up losing their deposits because of his deception.

That’s still theft.

>I don’t understand why a man who’d spent years
>developing Pokerspot and could make a fortune off of rake would kill
>his business and good name to make 400 thousand.

He killed his business and “good name” trying to keep his business afloat in the face of an impending implosion, using the deposits of his customers as currency for his effort.

>Wouldn’t he have made much more over time if he just left
>Pokerspot as it was?

Perhaps, if he hadn’t been about to go bankrupt.

———–

Michael O Malley:

I find it amazing the following that Dutch has formed from that TV show and online poker. He has a group that follows him around and listens to what he says, of course only the positive stuff. They don’t think he stole a dime and can’t wait to play at his new site.

Will be another sad day when ol’ Dutchy takes the money again and everyone tells his followers we told you so.

————–

He’s fundamentally never taken responsibility for the failure of pokerspot — it was this guy, it was that company, it was sunspots. He was the guy in charge, and he’s responsible.

The day one of the people who were robbed when PokerSpot went under gets one dime from that sleazebag, I will praise him.

Him SAYING he’s trying to pay people back — he cashed several hundred thousand in the series last year, and nobody mentioned getting a check from Dutch — isn’t nearly the same as him actually trying to pay people back.

He’s a sociopath and a thief. Fuck him.

———–

It’s fairly easy to use a poker site that isn’t vigilent to conduct credit card fraud and because of his incompetence he was sending fraudulent transactions to his credit card processor (not a business partner). As a consequence they froze his assets on deposit with them.

He then paid bonuses to new depositers to generate cash to try to pay off withdrawls. That was fraudulent on his part.

He was a victim of fraud because of his incompetence, he resorted to fraud to try to recover from that and it didn’t work.

You can google it, but in a nutshell, Boyd kept accepting new deposits to pay off current cashouts, like a ponzi scheme that eventually collapses.

———

If I steal a dollar and bet it on black, and if I lose, steal two dollars and put it on black, and keep betting that progression until black hits, than I can pay back what I stole. Am I still a thief?

———–

First, he shouldn’t have lied that cashouts were sent. I was told multiple times that my “checks were in the mail” when they never were. Boyd’s excuse for lying is that “desperate men do desperate deeds.”

Second, he insisted during the period of delayed cashouts that everyone would get paid eventually, and if necessary, he would sell the site’s assets, including the software. After the site closed, he received anr that would have given Boyd a few hundred thousand dollars and on top of that, paid off the debt owed to the players. The deal also included a non-competition agreement which meant Boyd would have had to leave the online poker industry for 2 or 3 years. Boyd refused that deal, saying that he “wasn’t leaving the industry that easily.”

He counterproposed with an offer of something over a million dollars, and needless to say, the person who made the original offer laughed in his face. At that point, Boyd’s first concern should have been the money that he owed other people, not whether or not he’d need to take a few years off from the online poker industry.

During the cash out delay, he repeatedly mentioned a pending lawsuit with the credit card processor, often e-mailing us saying that “the lawsuit is coming along nicely and we expect to pay everyone soon.” But since then (I believe in the Live Action Poker interview), Boyd says that he quickly realized the credit card processor had no assets and any lawsuit would be non-collectable. So either he lied then about the “lawsuit coming along nicely,” or he’s lying now about them
having no assets. Many people have asked Boyd to post details about the lawsuit, i.e. a docket number, or even which country’s court he sued them in, but Boyd has never offered any evidence of that lawsuit (he’s actually never even offered any proof that there was a credit card processor problem in the first place.)

When the Boyd FAQ is completed and posted, I assure you that there’s no way an unbiased observer could possibly side with Boyd.

———

From Russ’s recent posts he doesn’t think he is responsible. His only concern now is trying to make some money off of the whole thing and trying to pawn his ideas of reopening the site off on the players that got screwed. Russ..I gave you the benefit of the doubt after your first post, but since then you have shown your true colors. YOU are solely to blame for the 1000 players getting screwed. Not some bank or cash processor, not the players for talking and trying to pull their money out. As much as you would like to think otherwise, you opened a business and it failed. That leaves you
solely responsible.

———–

It is truly amazing what behaviors a person will try to justify if he or she is a friend of the offender. Russ didn’t just “fail in a business venture.” He outright stole money from hundreds of people. It’s not as if he asked me for five grand to invest in his business and it failed. I allowed him to keep five thousand dollars of my money in exhange for virtual “chips” that were supposed to represent that money. Legitimate casinos are supposed to have enough cash in reserve to cover the chips. Russ and his partners obviously didn’t do that.

His company gave away a fairly substantial amount in freeroll money that they obviously didn’t actually have, which reeks of a ponzi scheme to me–give away a lot of freeroll money and hope that enough deposits come in that eventually the site can pay off that freeroll money. Russ and his partners didn’t just engage in a “bad investment,” they defrauded people.

I personally was told on at least two occasions that I was already never sent a check — Russ replied to me in RGP that in “desparation” he instructed his support staff to lie about the situation. In any regulated industry, they’d all be in jail
right now. Instead Russ gets to play poker in Costa Rica and keep his profits, rather than use them to pay off his debts.

——-

Here’s latest news:

Dear Pokerspot Players,

As many of you are aware, several weeks ago we began experiencing problems with our then current credit card processor, Net Pro, Ltd. We promptly stopped processing through Net Pro and have since been unable to take new
player deposits or process cashouts. We are pleased to announce that we recently signed an agreement with Surefire Commerce, the most trusted name in the online gaming processing community, to process all future player deposits. All cashouts requested after March 15* will now be processed as normal.

In addition, we also are pleased to announce we are at a point where we can start repaying prior cashouts. All cashouts that have been requested prior to the 15th of March will be paid according to the following schedule:

20% by April 15;
20% by May 15;
20% by June 15;
20% by July 15; and
40% by August 15.

Please note that we will be paying all players who cashed out in January or February an additional 20% of their cashout as interest. We are pursuing several different avenues that might allow us the opportunity to pay all players before the above dates, including a lawsuit against Net Pro, Ltd., some short-term loans using the software as collateral, and a pending licensing deal.

Once again, we apologize sincerely for the inconvenience this situation has caused our players. We recognize that there has been quite a bit of damage to our reputation as a result of Net Pro, Ltd. and Barclays Bank freezing the player funds, and we can only hope that our reputation will be repaired once we are able to pay all of our players.

On a side note, our service provider has upgraded our bandwidth to an optical fiber connection. You should notice decreased latency, and increased playability. When new developments arise, we will keep you updated. In the meantime, we hope to see you on the site.

Sincerely,
Russ Boyd
President, Pokerspot.com

* - Please note that this does not include cashouts made prior to March 15 that have been re-applied to a player’s account.

>>Looks like we get paid

>>MS Sunshine

—————

They don’t have the money to pay you.

They are hoping to collect enough from players over the next 6 months so that they can pay you.

Gary Carson

————-

Gary,

Over the past two months, I’ve continued to see post after post where you make assumptions about Pokerspot activities and attack the integrity of both the site and myself personally. While I believe I understand your motivations, I do wish that you’d at least accept the possibility that we are handling a very bad situation as best as we can. There have been numerous other online casinos and cardrooms which have faced similar troubles which have simply disappeared.

The payment schedule is based on numerous things, not just a “hope” that we’ll be able to make enough money to pay off players. We are pursuing real means to get the lost funds back, including filing a lawsuit and pursuing asset-based loans. All of these means take time.

The current situation is bad enough without personal attacks. I lose enough sleep at night without posts like I read the other night on 2+2, where a player was (I believe jokingly) stating that he’d chip in to put a hit out on me. The bottom line is that Pokerspot is here to stay. We will be making good on all pending cashouts. Once we are through our current situation, I at least hope that you and our players will recognize that although things haven’t gone as smoothly as anyone would have liked, we are trying to make things right.

Sincerely,
Russ Boyd
President, Pokerspot.com

—-

That’s all for now. And allow me to say I hope this is the last post on the matter. And I hope Dutch’s situation improves and he gets well.

Don’t forget about CC’s tourney tonite on PokerStars! 9.30 EST - $10 buyin - NLHE! Password: Pokerworks

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.