Vinyl whilst i usually agree with most of your posts i have to dis agree with you on this issue pokerstars have already penalised this player as they issued warning a year ago but then a year later they have confiscated the funds as they said he was dodgy a year ago they allowed him to continue so they cannot confiscate funds based on what happened last year.
There was a thread on here posted that a player played a dissalowed game in the t&c after having taken a bonus at a casino but conatcted the support and told them and they said thats ok keep playing and we will keep track from here and not dissalow any winnings now to me this is the same scenario.
So lets say in a years time this same casino player wins a RJ and the casino says you have broken our terms a year ago you aint getting paid they could come on here posting and all hell would break loose.
This poker player has said he is dodgy playing multible accounts to disguise his id but this is no worse than bonus whores at casinos dodgy dodgy dodgy people but not fradulent or breaking any terms pokerstars allowed the players to keep playing after they were told what was happening with the accounts so for them to then confiscate money is out of order.
For the record i do not think what he did was ethical in any way but pokerstars keeping money after they allowed them to continue playing is wrong if they have a problem with what is happening take the money and close the accounts a year ago not let someone reform keep playing then steal the money.
Being a "bonus whore" is being clever, bending the rules, looking for loopholes, and taking advantage of poor promotional design. Multiple accounting is considered FRAUD, because of the element of deception needed to get it past the checks, in this case using other people's ID to "front" the accounts. Just because this has become "common practise" doesn't make it OK. It's a case of this subgroup of players getting away with it for so long that they began to behave as though they were exempt from the rules. It seems new people came into post, and they did NOT find this practise acceptable, so cracked down on it.
The debate is whether this was REALLY a second penalty for the same breach, or whether despite the warning, this player AGAIN decided they were "too important" to have to carry on obeying the rules.
This may be a case of the new team deciding to "make an example" of this player by confiscating the 32K, hoping that the other players who feel they don't have to play by the rules are scared off, and start taking the rules seriously.
Even if Pokerstars were to release the balance, but ban the player, they first have to decide whether the players it was won from are going to claim a refund because they were cheated through NOT being "in the loop", and having no idea they were playing a PROFESSIONAL player.
On your last point vinyl what if you emailed pokerstars and said i want to have 3 accounts and they emailed back yes but a year later took all your money and said no thats against our conditions which is akin to what happened here.
We have to remember that pokerstars are a company which can choose what T&Cs to enforce strictly but the security staff are a group of 3/4 people who can let certain things slide for image.
In no way i am doubting your casino knowledge vinyl and you know every trick that is employed by casino employees to get depsoits in but you know as well as me that the "company" can decide that an "employee" was wrong to offer a certain whale a bonus that cost them thousands and revoke it.
MY POINT is that pokerstars allowed him to play for a year then invoked the so called punishment this is what makes it wrong.
This isn't what happened. This player was NEVER told he could have several accounts, he got CAUGHT after getting away with it for some time. All he got was a "cease & desist" notice, and if he just thought he could lie low for a few months, and start multi-accounting again, he was wrong, and got caught again, or Pokerstars THINK they caught him at it again.
The ONLY way this player can justify getting his 32K is to prove that after the earlier warning, there were no further breaches of the rules on ANY of his former accounts.
Multi-accounting in casinos only gives an opportunity to "rip off" the casino over bonuses, but in poker it is other PLAYERS that get "ripped off", rather than the poker operator. These other players then lose trust in the product, and this then affects the operator, so operators DO take this very seriously, even though the reasons for doing so are somewhat different than for a casino.
On top of this, there has been mention of "transfers between accounts". Where multi-accounting is at issue, such transfers could be seen as "money laundering", and would make action even MORE likely.
Some may even winder whether the game was "fair" given that this 32K evolved from virtually nothing, presumably at the expense of other players. Maybe these other players were "ripped off" because they didn't know the class of player they were up against, and thus became easy prey. Maybe it was complaints from such players that triggered a new investigation, which lead to the confiscation of this 32K.
