iPoker P2P Transfer Suspension Linked to Illicit American Player Ring?

The “full house” at iPoker likely had a few extra residents, if recent allegations are true.

Rumors of Americans playing online poker on international sites via VPN (Virtual Private Network) hookups have increased of late, and there’s new evidence that the iPoker Network’s recent suspension of P2P (player-to-player) transfer capabilities is directly tied to the illicit operation of a ring of anonymous American players participating on the site.

In the last 48 hours, FlushDraw has been investigating the claims made on the Poker Affiliate Listings site by an anonymous poster named “Vadimgust”.  The unknown poster, whose IP location PAL’s owners have yet to make public, launched accusations that the iPoker P2P suspension was due to the discovery of a ring of Americans playing via VPN, all under the control of the aggressive and controversial owner of the iPokerVIP.com affiliate site, Jamie Nevin.

A sample of those claims:

A few days ago Ipoker blocked all p2p transfers which let many people who are honestly staking players hanging …. Reason of this closure is pokervip.com aka Jamie Nevin who hid themselves behind staking business to send US players to various rooms on the Ipoker Network …. especially Winner Poker, William Hill, Paddy Poker and Boylespoker …. The US players were registered on the rooms with different addresses and used a VPN, then pokervip.com transferred money to them per p2p transfer …. once a player wanted to cashout they transferred back to pokervip.com and got the money transferred in a way US players can accept such as Paypal, bank transfer …. This ofc is simply money laundering on a big scale ….

It’s actually ipokervip.com, not pokervip.com, to clarify; that little detail was slightly off.  As for Nevin, he’s been a lightning rod for controversy ever since his arrival on the affiliate scene three or four years back.  Reportedly in his early 20’s, Nevin has been widely and previously accused by other affiliates of unethical, predatory and cutthroat tactics, and as a result is largely held in disfavor by other affiliates throughout the poker world.

The allegations themselves are serious.  The alleged creation of a VPN-centered network allowing Americans to play on networks not currently serving the US is, of course, a flagrant violation of those networks’ terms of service, and if left unchecked after discovery, could endanger the future plans of any such network to enter a fully-regulated US market.

While such things are known to have occurred — a frequent Reddit poster named has even posted a general how-to on the topic, complete with YouTube videos — the concept of an affiliate operator organizing such an illicit ring, including fake identification for its participants, is a possibility which should give any online poker network concern.

Despite the whiffs of a bit of real flame beneath the smoky accusations, the nature of the initial PAL allegation was enough to withhold publication on a news forum.  Nevin’s unpopularity could have made him a target of unfounded rumors, and the trustwothiness of an anonymous poster making a first post under an unknown screen name on any site would always be suspect.

Nonetheless, inquiries behind the scenes confirmed that the rumors did have legs, and were more widespread than a single forum posting would indicate.  Today, over at pokerfuse, came the news that Nevin’s site had been officially tied to iPoker Network’s P2P suspension.

An e-mailing from iPoker to its member skins, reported on by fuse co-editor Nick Jones, announces that all these room will be required to submit KYC (“Know Your Customer”) verifications on all players referred by iPokerVIP.  The intent appears to be to root out all the United States-based players participating on iPoker via VPN hookups controlled by Nevin.

The initial allegations by the PAL poster (above) mentioned Winner Poker, William Hill, Paddy Poker and Boylespoker, and asserted that other rooms may be involved as well.  Of those, Winner Poker itself had a large number of player accounts recently suspended, though the initial crackdown may have overreached, as at least a few of those Winner accounts have been reopened.

Such a crackdown against US-based players probably could have been foreseen, given both the capabilities of VPN hookups and the risks such play could present to international sites.  IPoker is part of a heated traffic battle for the global #2 spot in online poker traffic, battling both PartyPoker and Full Tilt, each of whom is still well behind leader PokerStars.

Many significant rooms could be impacted, as this image of iPoker member skins shows: