In October of 2012 (so long ago), Chris Lee (aka black_laywer on Lock and poker2000 and a shit ton of other names on 2+2) contacted me about trading some online poker funds. We did our transaction and everything was smooth and easy. As a result of this transaction, I had his banking information stored as a profile within my online banking software. His account started with 6 zeros which made it the very first account listed in a drop down menu. I'll show you:



A few weeks later, I attempted to send a wire for high 4 figures to another online profile in my online banking. I filled everything out and hit "submit". My online banking then moves to this page so you can confirm the details:



As you can see, you need to scroll down to confirm details. If I want to change anything in the "data" field (where you can enter information attached to the wire for further instructions) you simply hit the "back" button.

However, when you hit the "back" button, it returns to the previous page but defaults to whatever account is at the top of the drop down menu. Since they are listed in numerical order, Chris Lee's account just happened to be the one at the top when I hit "back":



Long story short, it was EXTREMELY easy to send 2 bank wires to Chris Lee on accident for a total amount in the low 5 figures. Since I had Chris' skype, email address, 2+2 name and address, I contacted him immediately and asked him to send the funds back to me. I even offered to give him $100 for his time in helping me correct the mistake. As I'm sure you all understand, you can imagine that sick to my stomach feeling I got when he instantly "de-friended" me on Skype and did not reply to any emails or PMs. I tried every method possible for communicating but was met with nothing but silence for 2 weeks.

A mod on 2+2 offered his help and I gladly took it. He had referred Chris to me as someone looking to trade, but did not vouch for his credibility or anything. Never-the-less, he told me he used to work for a company tracking down alumni for colleges and he had some resources available to help me locate Chris Lee. He got me great info such as his Mother and Father's name and was able to get me is location that he was logging in to 2+2 from, which turned out to be Indiana University. This mod informed me that he knew someone that lived 20 minutes from Chris Lee's family's home and that he might be willing to attempt communication. I contacted the 2+2 mod's friend and we worked out an agreement where he would stop by the house and deliver a letter in person and state who he was and why he was there. Unfortunately, no one answered the door when he went so he left the letter in the mailbox. The letter simply stated the facts, that Chris had a lot of money that did not belong to him and that I would pursue legal action if it was not returned.

In the meantime, my bank, Chase bank, Indiana University police and anyone else I contacted for help on this were just repeating over and over that the money is probably not recoverable unless Chris says its okay to return the funds. IMO, these people are all just complete idiots who have absolutely no sense of ethics or morality who would rather run and hide under a rock than actually do some work and provide some service. You CANNOT just keep some money sent to you by mistake. I am sorry, but you just can't. No matter what "advice" you've been given, what laws are in place...you just CAN'T. It's pure and simply an matter of exchange. You can't simply take without giving something in exchange. That's how criminals operate and that's how you will be treated.

The only person who was on the same page as myself and the 2+2 mod assisting me was a young lawyer in New Jersey who I contacted in early December. I explained everything to him and he seemed EXTREMELY confident that we could easily get these funds back. This was definitely nice to hear and kept me energized. I compiled a timeline breaking down the events in chronological order along with all communication and communication attempts.

The person from 2+2 helping me had Chris Lee as a contact on Skype. On two occasions, he contacted me and told me that Chris Lee was online and talking to him about random stuff. The mod was very good in his communication and attempts to get Chris to talk about the situation. At one point, Chris told him to tell me to email all the information. Since I had sent him probably 20+ emails, I knew this was a front and that he probably had all my email addresses blocked. The next convo he had with him he told him that he didn't know me and then he promptly defriended me. He hadn't posted on 2+2 in a while and I was starting to think it was going to be extremely tough to get my money back.

Chris then resurfaced on 2+2 and I had 2 mods assisting me with IP address locations and all of his SN identities. Chris posted that he was leaving to Korea and was looking for poker stars funds. This was even more discouragement to me as if he left the country, it would be even tougher to recover my funds. I decided that the time was now to confront him face to face. I had his address, his parents names, recent proof that he was at his place of residence. I also received a letter from my bank stating that they had been working with Chase to recover the funds but that all communication attempts to Chris Lee AND Mrs. LEE *(his mother) had been unsuccessful and they again reiterated that they just need authorization from the account holder to return the funds. This was a major break through because they all but confirmed that Mrs. Lee was a joint account holder or minimally a secondary on the account. This meant that I could probably include his mother in any legal action I pursued. More importantly, it probably meant that there was a loving mother somewhere who would be willing to listen to me if it meant keeping her son out of trouble.

The wife and I headed to Vegas for New Years and I decided to head to New Jersey thereafter while the wife went home. (Vegas was a whole other story of scams). I scheduled a meeting with the lawyer and made a battle plan of actions to take to be most effective. I did not want to leave empty handed without feeling like I had done all I could do. After Vegas and flying for hours then driving for more hours, I was exhausted and needed to sleep. I rescheduled my lawyer appointment for the afternoon (as opposed to the morning). I woke up at around 9 am and had some time to kill. I decided that I would make a personal attempt at communicating with Chris.

I drove to the house. Obviously feeling quite nervous but driven more by rage, I walked to the door and rang the bell. Some things worth noting were that the house was very, very nice and was evidence that Chris came from a family with money.



This was obviously a bit reassuring. I knocked on the door and was happy to see that someone was home. The most stereotypical, cute asian lady answered...

Meet my dog Gunny:



He's a weimerarner.

About 5 years ago I decided I really wanted a dog. Weimeraner was my first choice but I eventually decided to adopt from the pound for my own personal, charitable reasons etc, etc. I found an awesome dog in Juno. She has been fantastic and has been with me from the beginning of my poker career. In April of this year, my girl was getting hot dogs from the super-clutch, super-delicious, super-cheap street hot dog vendor and someone came to the stand with a weimeraner puppy. Being the awesome wife that she is, she remembered our conversation regarding me wanting a weimeraner from years passed and inquired as to where said puppy was obtained. The person told her that a house around the corner had them and they were for sale for about $150 and they had 2 left.

She came home and told me and I snap hopped in the car and drove to the house. They let me in and the male immediately ran to me and sat on my feet and would not move. I was instantly in love with this guy (no homo).

He has been a great puppy. Yes he destroyed Jaymes' DreBeats but he was just so damn cute that he still made Jaymes Skype profile pic:



He was having a great life just being a puppy:



Enjoying the Beach:



Excellent Instagram work from Jaymes (kid should get paid for this shit)

Until One Day....

The wife came home from a night out and found him missing. We had an A/C repair guy come and we did not secure the side gate to our house when he left. Gunny is an absolute escape artist so he jumped against the gate until it opened. He figured out that if the latch isn't closed, he can eventually push it open. It has happened before but we always came home and found him still in the front yard with his fat sister Juno. You see, Gunny, being the slim, lean handsome dog that he is, can fit through the bars of the gate that is in front of our house. His fat sister cannot. Gunny decided he was going to roam the streets on this night. He never came home.

I spent hours walking the streets and driving the streets looking for this guy. He was no where to be found for days and the wife was a wreck.

Gunny has a very distinguishing bodily flaw. He only has one testicle. I hoped this would be our ticket to Gunny's return. I suspected that if I blanketed the neighborhood with flyers offering a decent reward and pointing out that he only had one ball....someone, somewhere will know something about him. If a dog thief decided to keep him, it wouldn't be long until someone recognized Gunny One Ball and called about their reward. We also hit up every Vet we could find and left a flyer and talked to the Vets and told them to be on the look out for a weimeraner with one ball.

5 days passed and there wasn't a single response. Not even someone contacting us to say they thought MAYBE they saw him somewhere. It was really soul crushing. The wife was a mess crying often. I even woke up one morning and the room was still dark and my eyes not so clear and I thought Juno was Gunny and he had returned on his own.

I finally decided I was going to make one last push to REALLY blanket the expanded neighborhood with flyers. I bought a $300 dollar color laser printer, two staple guns and a ton of thick printable card stock. My plan was to hire some kids for the day and just blast the area with these.

Clearly, the moment I got home from purchasing everything someone finally called.

He said that he thought he had our dog and wanted to know IMMEDIATELY how much the reward was. I was skeptical. My wife told him how much it was and he said "okay" and hung up. She was extremely excited but I told her that her phone number is plastered everywhere on flyers offering money and that we expected there may be some weird calls or people looking for some way to angle some money or w/e and that this call may have just been BS.

An hour later, he called back and said his battery had died but he charged his phone. He was asking all the right questions like why the dog only had one ball and why was he on the beach late at night etc...I knew he REALLY had him. He said that he found gunny at the beach (which is exactly where he would have run to) and that he had returned a few times to look for the owners and finally saw our flyers.

My wife arranged the meet and I was still worried. I told her to have him meet us somewhere NOT near the house and we asked two police officers to stand off in the distance and just observe. The gentleman arrived with his wife and baby in tow with Gunny One Ball. We paid and happily returned home and decided to have a little party in G.O.B's honor.

Welcome home son!

Fuck Ya.

Come at me Crispy.

Despite the charger/port being different (disabling a ton of functions I use the iphone for) and the maps being terrible (got me and the wife lost pretty horrifically), I do love it.

Here are some examples of the panorama features. Took these while visiting my former town of residence Sausalito (derivation for lostinthe"saus" fwiw).





S.F. TR soon.

Legit one time needed for Giants tonight. Nice to know Vegas thinks they'll win.

Well in 14 days, I lost a full 10 lbs which is pretty damn good. I feel good.

Gonna indulge a bit today on my birthday with a lovely chocolate cheesecake the wife made.

SF should be tough but hopefully I'll be able to moderate carb intake.

That is all.

Yes! Plateau'd no more. Still not sleeping. Prob gonna have to go to a doctor as avg 2 or 3 hours of sleep per night is going to eventually have extremely bad effects on me.

Poker is going well. Finally out of the hole for the month with a slight profit. Currently crushing Stars multi-tabling zoom and 6 max.




Recently, 2 fairly well known 2+2 members who were very active in the sports betting thread and trading threads went rogue and scammed a few people out of 8K and 10K respectively. The first guy, h.stucky, attempted to scam me too but because of my absolutely RUTHLESS policy of never sending money to anyone first I was able to avoid the scam. He got a bunch of people to send him money then he never sent the moneybookers or neteller funds he was selling. He then developed a fake personality pretending to be a girlfriend answering his emails for him. He (she) would tell people

that he had left the country to aid his ailing father in another country and it was an emergency blah blah blah. He hasn't returned and the money is gone.

I had traded with this person about 4 or 5 times in the past and even sent first in small amounts in the beginning of our exchanges. There was never any problem. He had a lot of posts and a good rep. He was pushing a sportsbook on me pretty heavy though and said he did all his online sports betting through them and they were awesome. I caught that he differentiated emphasized "online" sports betting, letting me know he did brick and mortar or less legit sports betting too. He would also contact me at random from time to time and ask me what I thought about certain lines. I NEVER sports bet outside of my friends just for the sweat and the chance to to talk shit so it was odd that he was asking me these things. I did a swap once where he needed money on an ewallet that I had and he would give me USD. He didn't deposit on time and gave me a weird story about how his parents made a mistake and then went to wrong bank and then tried to tell me it was deposited after 4pm so it wouldn't show up for 48 hours. He did get it done 48 hours later and I was relieved but I decided then and there, this guy was not to be trusted. I was also increasingly asked swap money and it ALWAYS involved me sending first, one time even just asking me for a loan straight up. I deleted him from Skype.

I found out about a week later that he had just scammed a bunch of people, including people he had very long standing good relationships with. My guess is that he got deep with a bookie and had to pay and this was his last resort.

Scammer 2, thess123 on 2+2 is almost exactly the same story. He had been betting with high frequency in the sports thread with other 2+2 members and had a good reputation. He had over 3K posts and everyone trusted him. Suddenly his bets increased to 3X his normal size. When he lost a huge weekend of sports betting, he didn't pay. He also got someone to ship him 6K on BCP in exchange for moneybookers or neteller or maybe USD and he never sent. Total amount owed on bets and BCP scam was 8K. He disappeared from the forums for 2 days and some posts started flying from people who believed they were scammed. He came back 2 days later with the most LOL post I've ever seen AGAIN using a fake GF as a prop blaming the whole deal on this new degenning, sports betting, account hacking, poker playing girlfriend. It's so ridic. It's long but such a great read. You HAVE to read this:

From 2+2 scammer thess123

Quote:

I haven’t been able to go through every PM/post that my accounts made in the last few days, but here’s what I’ve concluded is going on. I’m going to try to remain calm, and part of that is because if I don’t I will kill the next person I see. I am absolutely sick to my stomach.

To start, I have been “dating” (or so I ****ing thought) a girl for the past 3ish months or so that I met at a bar I work at. Best girl that I've ever been with in my life. Or so I ****ing thought. She was awesome, was interested in everything about me. Including poker. She had me teach her everything possible after I told her I played. I showed her two plus two. I should have been ****ing suspicious when she was asking so much about it. No girl is that interested in poker.

She was always around me when I was on 2+2. Obviously that’s not the only time I was around her but, looking back, she always seemed to hover over me when I was on. She seemed amazed by the trust that goes on in this community, and she knew that my trust here was something I prided myself in.

We talked a lot about poker/betting. Even if I can’t play right now, I’m still fascinated by it. More of what’s important: we talked about sports betting here. She saw the bets I was placing and the process behind it. She asked how I built up my reputation. We talked about how I was hoping to not have to do swaps for a week or two due to a few things, including the fact that I work double shifts on both Mondays and Tuesdays.

I gave her the blue print. I ****ing gave her the blue print. I trusted someone for the first ****ing time in years. I was “in love”. And now I’ve realized she was a ****ing con artist or has to be one. All she was looking to do was maximize the amount of money she could get out of me.

After the weekend I had, I told her I wanted to take a few days off from poker/betting because I was losing a little bit/my mind wasn’t where it should be when losing games. I figured a short break would do me some good. Skip 2+2 for a few days, it wouldn’t be too bad at all and I’d be geared up for the playoffs. She kept saying how happy she was for me to be able to take a couple day break without needing to press my luck. I ****ing should’ve known then. I figured I’d come post numbers Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning after swaps had taken place. I ****ing gave her the blue print.

Yesterday I went to work and left my phone at my house. I didn’t want to place a bet and figured I’d be tempted. She was the one who suggested it and I agreed. She had helped me with so many things in such a short amount of time that I didn’t think anything of it. Between shifts, she came and got me and took me to a late lunch-which evidently was just her using up all of my time-something she’s done before. She reacted when I picked up my phone before heading back to work. I should have ****ing known.

When I got out of my second shift she was there, ready to have fun after work. I didn’t think anything of it. Basically had the same day today. I felt good for taking a couple days off, but was hoping to get back at it tomorrow.

Then I get that call from a real life friend that “I” was trying to get money transferred to me even though I was at work. It seems like this “girlfriend” of mine had been at my house all day the past two days looking for ways to scam people using my reputation. It looks like atleast 6500 in transactions was made in the transfers thread, and I ****ing cringe to think it could be much more, I really don’t know 100% yet.

She used what I posted last week

...

First of all...GIANTS! Fuck yeah.

Numero 2:



I credit some heavy fiber intake.

Slept great the night before last.

Last night however, man...I just don't know what to do. May have to go to a doctor. It's really fuckin strange. I just lay there, totally wide awake. Got about 2.5 hours asleep. Attempted to go to bed at 1 am. Fell asleep after 6.5 hours of Audiobook at 7:30. Woke up at 10. I would have slept longer but had to go to immigration. I'm a step closer to becoming a Mexican.

Man...super plateau'd. So heart breaking because I was sure that I was gonna be moving in the right direction again. I didn't work out though because I took some otc sleeping pills the night before and I woke up feeling extremely shitty (but did manage to get about 9 hours of sleep). I was groggy and lethargic all day with a mild headache. I started feeling better toward the evening and actually got ready to go to the gym. I was leaving out the door to get in a good work out when I was reminded that Reef's b-day party actually started at 8:30, not 10 so I'd have to scrap it.

I have been extremely disciplined on diet and I'm happy about that. Doesn't look like I'll come anywhere close to my weight goal but just accomplishing the dieting aspect for a given amount of time is an accomplishment in itself. I do feel better for sure.

Getting extremely excited about bay area/bday/cabo trip coming up.

Super tough. Not feeling great atm. Have not been able to sleep for some weird reason. Tried all the tricks. I get tired but as soon as my body is vertical, it's like my nervous system just starts firing up and I am totally restless.

Plateau'd pretty hard.

Maybe some extreme exercise will help. I think I'll hit the exercise very, very hard today and see how that works.

Feeling good. Finally got some sleep last night after a decent evening workout. Not really sure if the f.lux does much but it somewhat feels like less strain on my eyes when it it's late. Could purely be suggestive results though.



Plateau'd still but feeling/doing well. Head is clear. Some body aches and stuff have started to disappear. Have been eating quite a lot and I am never hungry.

A's/Giants . Verlander is an officer.

Man U Pretty much an ass whipping.

Niners: Wow...they look unstoppable. Patrick Willis is a stone cold beast.

Gonna end this nice little Sunday with a trip to Sam's club to buy food for the week. Might hit home depot too...don't know though. Might not have time.