Last week the online poker community exposed another cheater that the poker sites failed to detect. This time it was happening on PartyPoker. An account with the name “Farafon111” was discovered to have a 67% Return on Investment (ROI) over 800+ games where highly skilled players normally hope for a high single-digit ROI.
Over the course of several months the cheater was able to operate undetected by PartyPoker’s own Investigation Department. Even after the community alerted Party Poker to this activity the account in question was allowed to continue stealing from players on the site for more than five days.
Discussions within the poker community unveiled that after 877 games – most of which took place in the $16-$35 6-max turbo Sit-and-Goes (SNGs) – the player had netted over $17k in winnings – a 67% ROI. For SNG regulars, there was no question these results were not legitimate. As more information was gathered it became clear that Farafon111 was utilizing one of the oldest and most blatant way of cheating in online poker: chip dumping.
Coordinating multiple accounts in the same 6-man tournaments allowed him the opportunity to put his competitors at a massive disadvantage by manipulating tournament equity into his own favor and ensuring himself a high finish position in the SNG. Although his stooge accounts would lose, the villain could still extract plenty of profit from his unsuspecting opponents.
Looking outside of the 6-max SNGs, it was also apparent that the cheater had abused “no deposit” bonuses with PartyPoker affiliates. These sites offer free money as a starting bankroll without requiring the new account holders to deposit any of their own money. Precautions are in place that require proper identification to ensure a person only claims one offering. Whether the offender managed to bypass the security measures with falsified documents or payed a small fee to real people in return for their personal data remains unclear.
The cheater’s playing record also shows that he finished his last game on October 16, meaning that PartyPoker failed to take immediate action to prevent him from stealing additional money from players unaware of his malicious activity even after the cheating had been reported.
The community expects the accounts to be banned with funds confiscated and returned to those who were cheated. PartyPoker chose not to comment further on the issue but did tell pokerfuse, “Be informed that we have [an] Investigation Department which deals with such cases and takes reasonable measures if needed.”
