The Equity Poker Network has chosen a rather different, but surely a moral and honest way to inform its clients about a scheme which was discovered on its platform. The company provided a press release which explained how the employees working in the Fraud and Security section of the platform have unveiled a chip dumping scheme done by four players. The skins where this happened are Full Flush Poker and 5Dimes.
EPN’s public relations team decided that being honest is probably the best choice they had. The press release has been sent to all stakeholders who may find the information helpful.
The first report of the chip dumping issue was reported by EPN skin 5Dimes staff that provided information of very big sums of money being transferred improperly to a player’s online account. The EPN management was advised to investigate the matter immediately, so that it does not happen again. The report was issued on September 22, 2014.
When the investigation began, the Security and Fraud Department of EPN went into great detail, analyzing all activity of the account, and managed to find that there was a ‘suspicious activity’, which led to three other accounts. The accounts were owned by players of Full Flush Poker. Another interesting fact is that the account was recently created – just a few hours before the actual chip dumping activity was committed (September 17).
A few media outlets expressed opinions, which supported the version about a money-laundering scheme. The chip dumping, according to them, was used to draw off all the money from stolen credit cards. The EPN skin 5Dimes reported that the player had transferred huge amounts of chips a number of times to the FFP players. When the FFP players received the chips, they then withdrew them, turning them into thousands of dollars. This leds to the conclusion that the FFP accounts were specially created to withdraw huge amounts of the misappropriated money.
EPN management stated that it is taking all available security measures to protect its networks and all players using them. The protection and safety of the players’ personal details is number one priority for the EPN. A spokesperson of the company stated that ‘the welfare of our players remains our number one priority, and we will not tolerate cheating or any other form of fraud occurring on EPN.’ He further assured that the Fraud and Security team is working hard to fully investigate the issue, and to prevent any other criminal activity.
Despite the very convincing statements by the EPN, this event is not the first of its kind. The last similar event was reported on February 14, 2014, however, EPN did not issue a press release about it. The suspicious activity was labelled a ‘collusion ring’ – a number of players conspiring together to win certain poker tournament, for example, raising and re-raising a third player until he was out of the game.
