This year, we’ve seen two major stories break on Poker News Daily involving small poker sites shutting down and player funds disappearing in the midst of scandals involving shady ownership groups. Pitbull Poker was shut down amid dwindling player numbers and a superuser scandal, with many players out tens of thousands of dollars. Perhaps the bigger story was the surprising shutdown and liquidation of Eurolinx Poker.
On September 17th, Poker News Daily interviewed sponsored pro and official affiliate Marc Karam. His affiliation with Eurolinx went back to 2006 and he not only was a sponsored pro, but he also referred hundreds of players to the poker site. Karam was made a lot of promises by Eurolinx manager and owner Jo Remme. In mid-2008, Remme asked Karam to borrow $200,000 and in return, Eurolinx was supposed to cover all expenses related to launching a new poker skin just for Karam. In the end, Karam lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and stated that he’s trying to put the situation behind him and get a fresh start in the world of poker.
On the TwoPlusTwo forums, there are two main threads dedicated to the Eurolinx scandal. The first was started by Karam, who recapped his Eurolinx story. In September, several players made posts in this thread to the effect that they wanted to pool their resources together to help in the recovery of their funds. This particular thread died in the end of September with most transitioning to the one entitled “Eurolinx w/d problems > UPDATE: Eurolinx seeks to put business into liquidation.”
This new thread, posted around the same time the previous one died, is where a lot of the actual discussion about bringing up charges against Remme in his native Norway takes place. In the middle of September, a post was made allegedly posting a comment from MicroGaming itself. The statement read that they were shocked and saddened that “this has happened to one of our licensees” and they were awaiting further information.
On September 23rd, a post was made by “ditou26” that came from a private investigator from Norway. The message from the investigator said that it would cost someone €2,000 to hire him to find Remme and make a claim on the client’s behalf. The investigator did warn that Remme has no more assets and is broke, in which case there would be nothing to take back from him.
On October 5th, an interesting post was made by “jdredd,” who claimed to be ‘Negativity’ on Eurolinx and had over $75,000 on the site. On behalf of himself and an associate, they hired a lawyer in Malta, but moved the investigation to Curacao. They moved an order of liquidation from the court, which was never responded to by Eurolinx. Eventually, they moved the court so that they had to be paid if Eurolinx wished to keep its license. Only a few days later, Microgaming wound up shutting them down. For all of his international legal efforts, jdredd and his associate were out over $125,000.
In the most recent weeks on the same thread at TwoPlusTwo, it seems the steam has been taken out of this case and the cold reality of the situation has set in. If a high-stakes player like jdredd, who searched all avenues and used his legal expertise couldn’t get a dime, chances are nobody else would either. For the most part, it seems that nothing has changed with the Eurolinx scandal.
It goes without saying that the two major shutdown stories of 2009 involving Eurolinx and Pitbull Poker are tales of warning to internet poker players. All players really have to assure them that their funds are safe are the historical reputations of the poker sites. For now though, the players that are out funds on Eurolinx continue to search for any way to recover just a fraction of their lost funds.