Likeness Of Professional Poker Players Used In Scam

Poker News - March 2nd, 2010 - Written By Glen

Poker is not an industry that is free of corruption, unfortunately, but the latest corruption has taken place outside of the tables. A new scam has emerged on the Internet involving the face and name of professional poker players and social networking sites.

Users of Facebook, one of the most commonly used social networking tools, have noticed an increase in the number of famous poker players. Dozens of Phil Hellmuths, a couple of Mike Matusows, and even a Tom Dwan have surfaced. Each of these users, who are actually amoral confidence tricksters, are asking for money transfers through different USA Online Poker Rooms, monetary loans, or even requesting to be staked in tournaments.

Obviously, these tricksters may have been met with limited success. Unfortunately, these unscrupulous con artists have been targetting the idolization of players, using the name of the professionals to their advantage. With some of the massive tournament winnings that these big names have brought in, especially in the case of Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negeanu, it is unlikely that they will be scouring Facebook looking for a stake. One report had even showed that the likeness of Tom "durrrr" Dwan had been used, despite Dwan's multiple millions generated from online poker.

As a word of warning, all Facebook users, poker fans or otherwise, are urged to ignore any requests they may have from the dozens of Phil Ivey facebook profiles, the Darvin Moon's, and the Joe Cadas, as each one of these are fake and an attempt at exploitation. One can only hope that these scammers avoid real online poker rooms and stick to the free play world of Facebook poker.

Note that online poker rooms such as Full Tilt Poker do not tolerate such scams and will take quick action against the would be perpetrators. The real poker professionals did not have anything to do with the wholesale begging of money from the online poker sites.