Over the years there have been a few incidents of people building up a solid reputation through poker forums and then subsequently making off with thousands of dollars from the people that have grown to trust them.  However, the latest scam perpetrated by Neil Blatchly on the Blonde Poker Forum is the largest to date.

So how did he do it? Blatchly created a staking thread about a year ago where he was looking for backers so he could “test” his sports-betting model. With a few interested parties taking him up on the offer the success stories started rolling in, and Blatchly quickly gained more and more capital from investors.

Unfortunately, the “Too good to be true” story was just that; too good to be true! Blatchly was running something of a Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Blatchly was placing bets, but was also taking money off the top which he used to gamble, vacation, and improve his lifestyle. A scam like this can run for a long time so long as the capital coming in is much more than the requests for payments.

Blatchly was eventually outed by another poster –who at first wasn’t taken seriously, and was somehow banned for questioning the Blatchly Gravy-Train—known as arbboy. The entire saga can be found here, it makes for some interesting reading.

Blatchly is somewhat of a poker player with some fairly decent results in tournaments around the UK; from 2008-2009 he won over $100,000 in poker tournaments.

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Tags: arbboy, Blonde Poker Forum, Blonde Poker scam, Neil Blatchly

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