Yesterday news broke that a high stakes German poker player was accused of scamming over two dozen players out of at least $2 million by installing Trojan Horse software on players’ computers that allowed him to have access to the person’s hole-card information.

According to the German website hochgetpokert.com, London-based high-stakes regular Maximillian Ashkar used his relationships with other high-stakes players to gain access to their computers and install the virus. Two players decided to confront Max at his hotel room in Baden, Austria at the recent European Poker Championships and after getting him to confess called the authorities. But when the police arrived Maximillian recanted his confession and said he was coerced by the two players.

In the end police have seized Maximillian’s computers and other equipment on suspicion of Internet fraud, while the two players who confronted him in his hotel room were charged with coercion and deprivation of liberty for their vigilante-esque response to their findings. One of the victimized players is reported to be EPT Tallinn winner Ronnie Kaiser.

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Obviously the story is getting a lot of attention on the Internet poker forums, and with the alleged perpetrator and the victims being well-known high-stakes players a number of other well-known players have offered their opinions in the threads. One such thread on 2+2 saw Mike “Timex” McDonald speak to his dealings with Maximillian:

“Wow I am shocked to hear this. I’ve met him at several live tournaments, gone to meals with him, gone partying with him, he’s told me that I can stay with him if I’m ever in London etc,”

“I will say of all the scandals I’ve seen in the online poker world involving someone I know, this is definitely the one that surprised me the most. Max honestly struck me as the type of guy who was fairly likely to get scammed since he was just extremely trusting of everyone and just struck me as kinda friendly/naive more so than calculating/manipulative. I guess he was just so calculating/manipulative that I didn’t see through it at all. Wow, I honestly would have probably put Max as being one of the top 5% of high stakes players least likely to be up to something shady,”

McDonald’s words are made all the more troubling when you consider that this was a person thought of as a “stand-up guy” in the poker world. So if Max did in fact scam players out of millions of dollars, just imagine what the people that are considered degenerates might be willing to do!

Stay tuned to PokerNewsBoy.com as more details develop on this shocking story.

Tags: Baden Austria, Best Sports, Coercion, Confession, German Website, Hole Card, Horse Software, Internet Fraud, Internet Poker, Maximillian, Online Poker, Perpetrator, Poker Player, Poker World, Scamming, Scandals, Sports Betting Tips, Timex, Trojan Horse, Yesterday News

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 at 10:06 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.