The 2009 World Series of Poker was a great one for my friend since he won event #13, earned over $500,000 for the win, and got his first gold bracelet. However, the aftermath was not so great for him as he got a big scare after returning to Ohio.
While my friend was checking his email, he found a message which was seemingly from an upstart online poker room. The message said that they wanted to offer my friend a deal which would pay him $5,000 a month to play on their site, plus other incentives. And it wasn’t so unreasonable to assume that he could get signed by a smaller poker room since he’s been playing in big online tourneys for years and won a WSOP event. Plus $5,000 doesn’t seem like such a huge amount that it would automatically tip off one to a scam….but that’s exactly what it was.
My friend clicked on the provided link and found that it didn’t really lead to anywhere special. After discovering this, he forgot about the fake offer and went on to his usual routine of entering tournaments on Full Tilt Poker. Immediately after getting on Full Tilt, he received another message that said he had a key stroke logger on his computer which needed removed.
So my friend got someone he knew to reboot his Windows program thus ridding him of the key stroke logger program and giving him some relief. What’s amazing to me is how quickly Full Tilt Poker caught this key stroke logger thing and alerted him to it. They must have some sort of software that quickly detects this kind of stuff and points it out to people. Whatever the case, I’m glad he didn’t become the victim of a major scam because of this.