Pitbull Poker employees arrested (important read)

Hey Everyone!

It's been awhile since I have been on. Myself and 2 others have been in Costa Rica working with police on the Pitbull Poker scandel. I posted a previous thread in regards to this scandel when it was first revealed.

A poster by the name of chester on 2+2 was contaced by us when he created a thread starting to ask questions about pitbull poker. We requested that he stop posting as we did not want Dave Brenes or any other employee's of pitbull poker to get wind of this. He refused and continued on. Luckily, they did not take any of his posts or others seriously and did not rid of enough of the entire evidence.

Since then.

We hired two lawyers from Canada, Ontario and showed them the study we have conducted over that while. They teamed up with other gaming lawyers in North America and things started to unwind from there. As they worked on the cases for quite sometime the study was put together that consisted of 124 pages and sent to authorities in Costa Rica.

Their authorites requested that the entire group fly to Costa Rica to help explain things and make it more clear. We spent 3 weeks there working with government officials and law enforcement.

The law enforcement agents were planning on making arrests on a certain date. 36 hours prior to the planned arrests Pitbull Poker Owner's attended the building where operations were held, drove a van onto the premises and started removing computers and loading them into the van. Certain employee's who were working with police contacted them immediatley. The police arrived on scene and arrests were made. They are currently being held by costa Rican authorities.

We were advised to return to Canada as it may not be safe for us there any longer. Our lawyers advised us we will have to return to testify against the company.

I will keep you updated on the details as they progress. I cannot reveal the entire facts but the basics should do fine for now.

If any previous players from that site hold any hand histories or evidence please contact me via PM. Also, if you recieve any emails from anything in regards to Pitbull poker I ask that you also contact me.

If the administrators can pin this, we would appreciate it. All information available is appreciated.



Many thanks


Kindly,

Shawn

So what where pitbull poker doing wrong? Whats was the scandel?

thanks for that shawn,but i got one question,do you reckon theres any chance at all that the people with money in their pitbull account(myself included) will get it?

wow. scandal after scandal in the online poker world. damn.

There had been some alleged insitences where it was believed that a player could see other peoples hole cards and pots beeing raked incorrectly.
Then it appears that the owners intended to close the site and take all the money with out paying players or the pitbull poker staff.

Have no idea why ya'll continue to play on-line poker for money. It's not regulated. Many people have trouble making deposits/withdrawals. It's kindasorta illegal. Why not just play in legal poker rooms? Is it worth all the hassle to play for money on-line?

For those that say YES, then I ask why do you put money and play on these rinkydink here today/gone to Maui websites? Why not just stick to the two biggest and most trusted sites..Pokerstars and Full Tilt? Is it the bonuses that get you?

I can't wait for the day that on-line Poker becomes legal and regulated in the U.S. But until then, I'll stick to the brick and mortar Poker rooms, and Pokerstars Play Money/Free Rolls to "sharpen" my skills..

Ummm... it is at least a 6-7 hour drive for me to play live poker lol. I think you forget that not everyone has that option.

Even with that said I completely trust sites like Pokerstars and Full Tilt and have never had any of the issues you mention with either of them. So why would I not play from the convenience of my own home whenever I want to? Even if I had easy access to live poker I would continue to play online as well. It is no hassle at all -even less of a hassle actually.

There are only 2 casinos staging live poker in a 200 km radius from my place.

Live poker is prohibited in germany - only freezeout tourneys w/o rebuy are allowed, no cash games eather.

It takes me about 20 sec to get a game going so why should I drive 3 hrs to join a crappy game in a casino ?

I'm only playing at major sites (as mentioned) and can't see any problems there so far.

Go see Micheal Moore's new film "Capitalism, a Love Story". You won't feel so bad about all the poker site scandals. Your banker and stockbroker are worse, and they operate under the law.

Not really sure why you play online at all? How a 3000 plus freeroll will sharpen your skills is a totally ridiculous excuse. There are no casinos in my province, minimum cost for me to go to one would be $500 plus in expenses, try dropping $500 in a drain before entering a casino and see if you come out ahead.

This chester guy on 2+2 suspected that Pitbull had superusers who could see everyones hole cards...if u go on 2+2 forum there is a 150 page thread starting from his 1st post...Its sort of funny the poker manager at pitbull actually made a username to respond on the forum..or at least it looked that way

Do you and Joe ever play heads up at the kitchen table? I think that would be fun and good practice. I wish Mary was good at poker so we could do that.

As you've already heard, yes, it is. There are many people making 6 figures or more annually playing online poker. As you may have noticed in late 2008, regulation does not necessarily equate to security of your investment.

IMHO, this is good advice. And it's exactly what I do. Those two organizations have earned my respect and trust over the years, something many other sites have failed to do.

thats why i hate winning real money at sites like this,seems like its not real at all.

That guy is a hack.

Here here! I second this wholeheartedly.

Shawn, thank you for the update. I hope you will be able to provide more details soon. I see no one here at this forum has questioned your validity, and my being new I'll go with the more experienced people's views, for now.

One thing, you seem to be aware of the 2+2 forums on this, and there the Dave Brenes claimed to report on this also, and that he was not implicated. Are you able to confirm that Dave was not one of the arrested/held?

The rest of public postings clearly name CEO Kevin Baronowsky and Operations Manager Jordan Nixon.

Sorry guy's that I haven't been around in the last few days since I posted this. I am way behind on paperwork, I actually had to take a leave from work to attend to this matter.

To answer the questions.

#1. It is impossible to guarentee anyone their money back that was lost at this point. We would have to wait until further in. The owners could claim bankruptcy, they could deny it for quite sometime before any decisions are made by the courts. Appeals etc etc. It depends on what route they take. With that being said, we will be demanding the players be reimbursed fully.


On another note I was in the midst of players getting refunds from the omaha shavings that were set in place by pitbull. That is until they found out about our study and closed my account and any ties with me. It is proven that 75% of players who were affected by this "shaving" were not even told about it, let alone refunded.

#2. As for Dave Brenes, from what the lawyers are stating, he is taking the position of "I don't know anything about this, I was just the manager" standpoint. As far as I know he has been questioned and he is being investigated.

Please feel free to ask anymore questions and I will keep you all updated.

Shawn, thanks for all the info and good luck with everything. Hope players can get their money back.

I played a few times on PitBull, but only had the $10 I got for signing up in my account. Never really liked the Flash interface. I know Eurolinx recently shut down too as well as at least one or two other sites.

I play on a lot of different sites besides Pokerstars and FTP. Are there other sites that are questionable? What about Ultimate Bet? They seem pretty legit. I know there were problems awhile back with Absolute and a superuser account. How does one know if the site they play on is legit or just one big scam?

I play some of the Cake sites as well as Merge and Microgaming. Is it best to stick to just the two or three major sites?

Honestly, in my opinion. Who knows anymore. I don't want to slander any sites not having claims agains them but you can't shy away from the fact, this is the third site being caught. How many others do we not know about?

Ultimatebet/Absolute Poker I wouldn't touch personally. Once you're caught red handed, they don't deserve second chances. This is just my opinion.

There has also been problems with microgaming where they have left hundreds of players without their winnings. Totalling over, hundreds of thousands. Here is a link to explain some of it. All you have to do is google "microgaming scandel" and you will come up with the info you need.

http://www.hundredpercentgambling.co...icensee-in.htm

The US needs to legalize and regulate online poker so jerks like these don't have the chance to run away with everyone's money. Not gambling as in sports betting, etc. just poker. It's a game of skill and luck and I don't see any of the states having problems having their own lotteries which are nothing but luck! Eventually it will come to pass but only because our scumbag politicians will undoubtedly see that they can make money from it.

Does anyone know what the latest is on Barney Frank and the boys trying to get on-line poker legal and regulated?

Shawn, who are you? A lawyer or what? What is your particular role in the Pitbull scandal?

And this is why I don't play at pitbull poker. Some of these smaller sites seem kind of fishy...if there were superusers that is crap since then that would be like the ultimate bet scandal. Hamilton should get in trouble for that.

i'm glad chester put it out there atleast people had a shot of getting their money out. i mean how long were you going to let it go on before something was done? people lost money now that they may never get back. atleast a few people got thier money out before it was lost for good.

Shawn, is that same as Sean Gibson?

Also, I have it from a ground source in CR that Kevin and Jordan are NOT being held. Do you have much assurance that they won't be allowed to leave the country or flee, based on the pending actions you have?

Nothing in this guy’s post passes the “sniff test” for me. Let’s see if I got this right:

An entire team of North American gaming lawyers has been hired to put together a 124-page study detailing Pitbull Poker’s alleged cheating … a document so compelling that Costa Rican authorities flew the entire group to CR for 3 weeks of cooperative investigation?

I call bull shit.

There are no “authorities” in CR that govern online gaming-related businesses. There are no government officials or law enforcement dedicated to policing the online gambling sector. In fact, unless a crime has been committed against a citizen of Costa Rica, the Tico “authorities” seldom get involved.

Perhaps OP could help put my doubts to rest.

What authorities did you spend 3 weeks working with? Specifically the name of the agency or agencies involved? This information would neither endanger your “investigation” nor anyone’s safety, so you can tell us.

BTW, I lived in CR for 3 years and worked with many folks in the gaming industry. I still have tons of friends down there with whom I speak almost daily.

I'm sure they couldn't care less about the issues the players may have with PB, but I heard that the CR authorities are very protective of employees of companies. Maybe they're involved to the extent that employees are owed large sums of money by Kevin and co.

zing ... there's no doubt that Ticos look out for their own. And, most certainly any involvement by CR "authorities" would be based solely on protecting employees and vendors who may be owed money.

I simply don't see how a team of Canadian/North American lawyers and three non-Tico players who assembled more than a hundred pages of "evidence" against Pitbull would be called down to CR for 3 weeks to assist in any related investigations, sent back to Canada by the CR authorities for their own safety, and are awaiting recall to the country to testify at a later date.

Actually, the reason I don't see how this would have happened is because it did not happen. This is nothing more than a fictional story, invented by some MacGyver-wannabe-attention-whore. A story that is simultaneously funny and sad.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

agreed

Boog, you could be right also. But there WAS involvement by CR employees that was part of this and maybe that's all that triggered the police taking them in for questioning. No one is still "held", at least that's per MY source on the ground, but maybe you could use your better contacts to verify that?

But, given your post, Boog, I would conjecture that now Kevin and Jordan are at least going to have to pay the CR employees. The test of the OP's story will be if, after they pay their debts to CR employees, do they just get let off.

But it *could* well be that the CR officials needed the evidence of gaming imporoprieties in order to cement their case for crimes against the CR employees, and might have worked with them on that basis. No?

All i know from reading this post is that there needs to be an association for poker sights,this association must do a full du dill agents and put some guid lines in place of how withdraws should be handled amongst a lot of other things.

If the poker sit blockes your account then this association should be able to investigate it on behalf of u as a mediator.

Us as players could join this association and only play on sights that are endorsed buy it.Thiis woul give us a peace or mind that our interest are being looked after and the poker sights will also have some saught of credability belonging to the association.If they break the rules then they must be kiked off this associatin,and like wise for poker cheats.they must get black listed.

Lazmansa

So,I think the way for furture of online poker is :1.make online poker totally legal.2.make online poker under the true supervision.

Exactly right! This guy is Skunked from the original 2+2 thread. He was banned over there (or run out on a rail) for continually posting this crap, trying to insinuate that he was an integral part of the scandal's uncovering.

So Skunked, Revelations123, or whatever else you are calling yourself on your mad quest for recognition, please put up or shut up. You've been called out on yet another poker forum.

Please provide some details of your study and team of gaming lawyers who were flown down to Costa Rica and then had to flee the country for safety's sake!

Lazmansa I think this association you are talking about sounds like ecogra. Google it and read