Money Missing From Poker Accounts

[dorethawsp]

I emailed PP this morning voicing my concerns about this situation and this is the reply I received. I wonder what the appropriate action was?

Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:08:41 -0500 (EST)
From: alerts@partypoker.com
To: _____________
Subject: RE:Something must be done, tealninja, mongoboy333 [#4704290]

Dear Kim,

Thank you for contacting us.

With reference to your mail, we wish to inform you that we are aware of this scenario and would want to assure you that appropriate action has been taken against these players who were involved in such fraudulent activities.

Kim, please be rest assured that we have a dedicated Investigations Team which does proactive investigation into players accounts and takes appropriate action against players found to be involved in fraudulent activities.

If you have any further concerns, we request you to email us at alerts@PartyPoker.com. We would be glad to assist you.

Contact us anytime, we are available around the clock to assist you with your account related questions and suggestions.

Sincerely,

Sricharan
Investigations Team
alerts@partypoker.com

[Gomez]

This sounds like solid advice to me.

I am very curious as to why there was not swift action taken by Party to at least freeze the accounts until they could do a complete investigation. Good luck to Peachy on this one. I won't be leaving anything over the minimum in my accounts after reading this thread.

[all_in_lam]

[ QUOTE ]
Ok...some of you may know me some of you might not....either way lets not make that a relevant part of this post...

Im not going to go into detail...but I was curious as to who has had problems with "lost" (missing, stolen, hacked, etc.) funds in thier poker accounts and the end result of this.

Please dont make it super long, just a summary, with what site, limit, how long it took for action to be taken (if any), what you were told, and the overall end result, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

ive lost about 1k on multipoker. they mistakenly blocked my accoutn and have never returned my emails or unblocked my account. This was before partypoker split with its skins, i still ahvent got the 1k back.. neone know mutlipoker or any advice?
p.s ive contacted multipoker support/partypoker support to no avail.

[WLVRYN]

I feel like those of us that arent in the "know" with Peachy arent getting the whole story here, just little snippets. I keep going back to read prior posts after new ones get posted, but I cant seem to keep track of whats going on. Peachy - Can you please post an update of what you have heard from Party to date and what you and others helping you have figured out?

[peachy]

After about 3 days they admitted Mongoboy was involved...gave me back half of what he ended up taking from me when ass was said and done (2k) - out of the +10k taken - and I have not been about to get a hold of the person "in charge" of my investigation since, nor have I been called back about the notes I had them leave in my "file".

So basically, because Mongo (and others) were not stopped in time, when they were first reported, there is not enough money in that account to fully, or even a fraction of the way, reimburse me and the other person this happened to. I am not satisfied with this outcome and cannot describe how I feel. I have gotten little sleep in the last week attemping to address this problem.

So a week later...it is near impossible for me to talk to someone at party who is "working" on the case. I am going to try and call again tonight.

Basically, others feel that there are a number of people involved in what happen, and thier main concern is party's lack of action when these things were reported weeks ago - allowing these people to continue stealing and dumping peoples money, in some cases to innocent bystanders at the table, making the money not recoverable. Total nightmare.

[ChoicestHops]

[ QUOTE ]
After about 3 days they admitted Mongoboy was involved...gave me back half of what he ended up taking from me when ass was said and done (2k) - out of the +10k taken - and I have not been about to get a hold of the person "in charge" of my investigation since, nor have I been called back about the notes I had them leave in my "file".

[/ QUOTE ]

Simply not acceptable. If Party doesn't give your money back in full then it will take threats of -PR and high stakes players doing something about it. That's pretty [censored] pathetic.

[WLVRYN]

Thanks for the info, that's what I was looking for. I hadnt read all of the hand histories, but I am pretty shocked that they did this to another person at the same time. These guys must be idiots for being sneaky enough to hack multiple accounts.

Any futher idea how they got your account info? It sounded like they accessed your account from a different IP address, so they must have acquired your password and login somehow rather than some of the other cases of taking over computers and logging in from the hacked computers.

At least you got a little of your money back. I know its not what you were hoping for, but its better than nothing at this point. Keep us updated on the pursuit, as I'm sure that most of the forum wants to know how it turns out.

[thedorf]

[ QUOTE ]

Quote:
After about 3 days they admitted Mongoboy was involved...gave me back half of what he ended up taking from me when ass was said and done (2k) - out of the +10k taken - and I have not been about to get a hold of the person "in charge" of my investigation since, nor have I been called back about the notes I had them leave in my "file".



Simply not acceptable. If Party doesn't give your money back in full then it will take threats of -PR and high stakes players doing something about it. That's pretty [censored] pathetic.

[/ QUOTE ]

exactly, that's why in another thread I suggested the following which was met with little apparent success but I'm hoping that it will meet more receptive ears here. Here's a copy of the post I made to help peachy and, therefore, all of us out(sorry about the double posting). By the way, please remember that the security measures that I (as well as others in this thread) suggest would be VOLUNTARY.

<font color="green">Hi everyone,

I was up late reading about Peachy's terrible misfortune </font> http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...9152&amp;page=


<font color="green"> and before my session I decided to write party a letter. If A LOT of us do this, things will start happening faster. I am including a copy of the letter for all who wish to copy it. By the way, the subject I used was "Major Security Concerns." I would suggest we all use the same subject and mention that we are all talking about this and doing something together on twoplustwo. If there is one thing big companies are afraid of, it is large groups of unified, angry people who have an opportunity to take a chunk out of their bottom line. Which is exactly what we'll do if party doesn't clean up its act. Here's a copy of the email. Feel free to send it as is or modify it if you want but let them know we're in this together. </font>

To whom it may concern,

I am very concerned about numerous recent reports that have appeared on the “Internet” section of the gambling forums at www.twoplustwo.com. Several players who are respected in the poker community have reported stolen funds from their party poker accounts as a result of someone hacking into their personal computers. If you read through the threads which include but are not limited to

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...9152&amp;page=

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...0429&amp;page=

you will see that I am not the only party poker customer who is alarmed by the recent trend.

While I am aware that Party Poker cannot possibly ensure that all of its users follow high level security protocols on their personal computers, I would suggest that treating this problem as the customer’s will be done at your own peril. If you read the threads carefully, you will see that many players have already taken one or more of the following steps:

1. Removed substantial amounts of money out of their Party Poker accounts.
2. Referred potential Party Poker customers to other sites because of security concerns. Or,
3. Left Party Poker altogether.

You will also notice by reading the threads carefully that players are NOT concerned about Party Poker being hacked by criminals. They are worried about THEIR OWN computers being hacked by sophisticated thieves. These thieves presumably gain access to their accounts by running programs from remote locations that record the user’s password by logging the user’s keystrokes.

How can Party Poker prevent this activity? Many people have suggested that the users themselves invest time and money into zapping hard drives and installing sophisticated security software, among other things. I, however, would like to suggest that Party Poker take full responsibility for this problem on their side. This could be done by offering customers a new level of security whereby their accounts stay locked until they call party poker and login over the phone (I haven’t worked out the details of such a feature but I know it’s been done before using 10 digit pin numbers or the like). The user would not be allowed to login until he/she had touchtoned in via this new service. This would make it nearly impossible for a hacker to gain access to someone’s account and would save all of us money in the long run. Also, I would like to hear that these cases of theft are being handled fairly and expediently by Party Poker. According to the reports, this has not been the case.

I appreciate the service that Party Poker provides but until steps have been taken to ensure security I will be keeping less money in my Party Poker account and will be hesitant to recommend you to acquaintances.

Sincerely,


<font color="green">By the way, I think it is essential that we as users do actually take the steps i mention in the letter, as well as the security steps that so many generous 2p2ers have provided simply to protect ourselves. </font>

OUT.

thedorf

[thedorf]

[ QUOTE ]
I leave about 125BB's at any site I'm playing at. that's all, the rest is in Neteller.

however, my Neteller account could be hacked as well. if some guy got into my system, and discovered my Party password, there's a good chance he could get my Neteller info and somehow withdraw from there. ditto for my regular online banking account, mutual funds, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

I once had six thousand dollars stolen from my master card by a travel agent in Peru. I basically told them that I didn't go on all the "flights" that the crooked travel agent "sent" me on (he basically bought tickets from himself and just kept the money). After I told them that I didn't make the charges, they immediately refunded the balance on the card. Party is not doing this for peachy and that is the real problem. If someone hacked into your bank account, my guess is that you wouldn't have to talk to half the Indian subcontinent before getting back what was yours in the first place.

[thedorf]

the site shouldn't take money from anyone but themselves. They should reimburse the player that got hacked from their (the site's) own pocket. Period. if they want to keep things like this from happening then they should read this post

after they read it, then they (the poker sites) can make any player who gets hacked responsible for his/her OWN losses because he/she chose not to take advantage of this nearly impenatrable security feature.