Manne wrote:
Unfortunately the gambling industry is full of wise guys who consider the industry fertile ground for scammers and thieves. The good players far outweigh the bad though and with the strong police efforts many of the crooks don’t get away with their crimes for very long.
Recent news about a few of these bad actors has surfaced regarding Japanese high stakes poker player Masaaki Kagawa who has been arrested on suspicion of running a malware scam. Masaaki Kagawa, is one of nine people to be arrested by the Chiba Prefectural Police, in Japan.
It has been suggested that Kagawa and his group distributed spam that included e-mails containing links to download Androis.Enesoluty. This web site contained a Trojan horse that stole information from Android mobile devices and send it to a remote server. It was thought the malware was used to collate around 37m e-mail addresses from around 810,000 address books. The e-mail addresses were used to direct people to a bogus online dating service called Sakura, which cost to be part of.
Kagawa was part of the Super High Roller Reload event in Monte Carlo back in 2012 that involved €98,500 No-Limit Hold’em. The 38 players in the game was divided into two distinct divisions, the whales and the professionals. Kagawa considered a whale, but it appears that Kagawa’s money came by less than ethical means. Press reports believe the gang had earned about $3.9m through the e mail scams.
The fifty year old poker player’s winnings spiked in 2012 with his total winnings coming in at $1,621,971. There were eight others involved in the internet scam including other people associated with Kagawa’s company Koei Planning.
The Japan Daily Press reported, “The mobile malware was just a step towards his real scheme, which was to send out spam about his dating site and get people to sign up over there and not really get any service,” Vikram Thakur, principal research manager at Symantec Security Response the company that discovered the malware program commented.
High Stakes Online Poker Player Kagawa Arrested in Japan
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2013/08/20
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The idea was first introduced by the chief executive officer and president of the AGA, Geoff Freeman, who sent an email to the board, suggesting that the movie be used as a catalyst to promote the association’s long standing view that the federal government should legalize and regulate a poker-only online gambling landscape.
“The plot of Runner Runner centers on illegal online poker and unscrupulous offshore operators, dramatically underscoring the risk American consumers face in a poorly-regulated market. The film underscores the AGA’s message to lawmakers about the urgent need for online poker regulations in the United States,” wrote Freeman in his email. “The AGA will leverage the certain coverage this film will receive to raise awareness about the need for proper regulation of online gaming. Tactics may include releasing research on the amount of illegal Internet gaming currently estimated to be taking place in the United States, driving theater-goers to the AGA website to learn more about properly regulated gaming.”
While industry analysts don’t believe the use of Runner Runner is likely to sway any opinions in any significant direction, some are saying that it probably wouldn’t harm the process for online poker proponents. As Dave Behr of Bluff Magazine says, “nothing else has worked” in bringing federal online poker to the US yet. He states that Californian poker bills are most likely to fail once more, there are no signs of legislative progress by the US Senate and everything else seems to be in limbo on a state level. While he calls the AGA method “unorthodox”, his reasoning is that the association may as well give it a shot.
AGA Turns to Hollywood to Promote Online Poker Message