Joe Sebok Barred From Canada Over Vandalism

[PiquetteAces]

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i heard this, and was just wondering why sebok wouldn't just tell them he was going to play in the tournament, since i'm sure that's what his plan was anyways.

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Yeah, it's BS that they barred him (and the stuff about the trafficking allegations seems like something out Brazil or something), but it seems Joe took the wrong approach to crossing the border and offered way too much info at the outset. As our cabbie mentioned after we passed the border, "Never tell them more than you have to. Canadian customs are notoriously huge [censored]. " Unless they were traveling with a bunch of recording equipment or something, there was no reason to complicate things by saying anything other than, "We're going to play a poker tournament." Anyway, sucks Joe...

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& U think american customs aren't huge (censored) ?



The David Benyamine 'story is the worse of all : http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/16326

here is the part i'm talking about: Land of Confusion
On March 20, 2004, the PartyPoker Million III cruise terminated its week of high-seas gambling, bad Hawaiian shirts, and 24-hour buffet in the port of San Diego.

At 5 a.m., passenger David Benyamine woke up to a surprise in his cabin; FBI agents demanded that he come with them.

Surprisingly, this wasn't the first time that this type of thing happened. "When I came to the U.S. before, the Immigration Service had given me a hard time because someone with the same name as mine was wanted," he said. It has been reported in the past that Benyamine was accused of being a terrorist. He said that isn't the case. "I never heard that this person was a wanted terrorist. It could have been someone who didn't pay his parking tickets, for all I know."

Whatever the case, Benyamine had $25,000 on him and was itching to get to Bellagio, not deal with bureaucratic red tape and a bunch of overzealous FBI agents. After waiting eight hours in the FBI office, Benyamine said they finally decided that he was not the bad Benyamine. "The three FBI agents wished me good luck in the World Series and I thought I was on my way," he said. "They asked me to sign some papers and said I would be free to go." However, after a few more hours, he hadn't moved. It turned out that, a supervisor concluded he was in America playing poker as a professional rather than as an amateur. "They said I needed a professional visa rather than a tourist visa. I never heard of such a thing, since everyone I knew came to play poker in America with a tourist visa. They said, 'I'm sorry, but we have to deport you to France.'"

It was Saturday night, and he was told he would be deported on Monday morning. He was sent to a detention facility. There was no bed, it was tough, they counted his money in front of the other prisoners, and he wasn't able to make a phone call.

When Monday morning came, he was ready to head to the airport. Instead, he was driven to a state jail in the middle of the California desert. Once he got to the jail, nobody would tell him what was going on. He was forced to stay there five days until they finally sent him home.

Once he finally landed back in France, it took him more than a year to get a visa. He secured a three-year professional visa, which allowed him to go back to the U.S.