In a stunning case out of the United Kingdom, a (formerly) sponsored online poker affiliate and World Series of Poker bracelet winner has been charged with several counts of online gaming fraud.
The British newspaper the Grimsby Telegraph reported that British poker professional Darren Woods was charged with 13 counts of fraud and money laundering that he allegedly committed through several online poker and gambling sites. The Telegraph reports that Woods, who held an affiliate sponsorship deal with 888Poker.com, allegedly committed his crimes between 2007 and 2012 that saw him use his online screen name ‘Dooshcom’ to collude with at least one other player to take hundreds of thousands of dollars against opponents at the site’s $500/$1000 tables. Woods also allegedly enlisted the aid of his father in the scheme, who was charged as an accessory on four of the counts presented.
British prosecutor Alasdair Campbell spelled out how Woods allegedly committed the crimes in the motion in the British courts located in Sheffield, England. “He was able to defeat the sophisticated methods employed by those companies (online poker sites) to prevent multiple accounting and collusion,” Campbell alleged in court documents. Woods was able to create the multiple accounts through using different computers – even going to the point of buying access to other computers or other people’s identities – and employing different internet service providers (ISPs) to cover his tracks. Campbell states in court documents that not only did Woods use these accounts for on the felt (which would give him an advantage against other players) but also ran them through his affiliate account, allowing him to “double dip” in earning money from the multiple accounts that were created.
“This is dishonest…he made significant sums of money,” Campbell stated, although he didn’t indicate just how much money was made from the effort. Following his indictment in the case, 888Poker immediately ended their relationship with Woods.
As with the last major online scandal for poker, it was the poker forum Two Plus Two where the information was first discussed. In 2011, poster ‘feruell’ provided a great deal of information that supposedly demonstrated that Woods – using at least two of his online aliases – was achieving results that eerily looked like the Absolute Poker “superuser” scandal. In a particular graph, various ratios were discussed that showed out of the ordinary play between several accounts and success beyond a normal rate. Over the past three years, that original post has now expanded into a 32-page thread that has dissected all aspects of the case.
Although it has taken almost two years to bring the case to court, the information that may be found out during its litigation could be very informative to the poker community. The methods that Woods allegedly used would be of great interest to all online gaming companies, including those in Europe and the United States, as they would be able to potentially employ countermeasures against such actions. It would also provide an insight into what lengths someone – if they have the resources available to them – might go to defraud online gaming and poker sites and mark a landmark moment in that an online poker fraud case would enter any court jurisdiction. If the case goes against him, Woods would be on the hook for a massive repayment to those that were affected and, more than likely, significant jail time.
It isn’t as if Woods hasn’t had some success in the poker world. He initially found some success at the 2007 WSOP Championship Event, earning a min-cash in that tournament. He would come back frequently over the past few years, eventually winning a WSOP bracelet in 2011 when he won the $2500 Six Handed No Limit Hold’em tournament over such players as Gabriel Nassif, Andrey Zaichenko and eventual runner-up Kim Nguyen for a $213,431 score. His last tournament score was earlier this month at the United Kingdom/Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) event held at the Isle of Man and his career earnings on the tournament circuit total slightly more than $466,000 (according to the Hendon Mob database).