At least one well-known pro will be sweating nervously after Josh Arieh took to Twitter this week with the threat to ‘out’ the player for apparently not paying his debts…
I got a real good one for ya! I may feel like exposing him soon. I’m sick of seeing him travel the world playing poker, while he tells me he “barely paying his bills”. Gotcha popcorn ready! https://t.co/Y3X5xkGW46
— Joshua Arieh (@golferjosh) December 7, 2019
Josh Arieh ’s threat to expose the fellow pro came after Dan ‘wretchy’ Martin had tweeted:
“It’s unreal how many WPT/WSOP winners are scum pieces of stiffing shit and you guys continue to bow down to these losers. Day of reckoning will come soon.”
Neither Josh Arieh nor Dan Martin have yet named their respective ‘scumbags’, but you don’t have to look far in the poker community for potential perps.
Within the last couple of years alone, highstakes legend Eli Elezra, WSOP Circuit record-holder Maurice Hawkins, New York pro Nicky Palma and David ‘Chino’ Rheem have been outed for various scams and bad debts.
Eli Elezra’s borrowed Millions of Dollars
Elezra allegedly owes at least 1 Million Dollar to various fellow pros, Abe Mosseri, Cole South and Shaun Deeb chief among those to call him out as Elezra’s book-promotion AMA on 2plus2 forum crashed and burned with the allegations.
It all started when forumites wouldn’t let Elezra dodge the ‘elephant in the room’…
The Israeli pro finally answering: “Poker players are always lending each other money. I always pay my debts.”
Things went from bad to worse for Eli Elezra after that, Abe Mosseri claiming he was owed $835k, and you can read the full story here.
Maurice Hawkins’ staking debts
Maurice Hawkins, who has more than $4million in live tournament cashes, hit the headlines this summer when a backer sued him for a $100,000 debt.
The previous year he was described as “a cheater and an angleshooter and a bully” by another backer, lawyer Hal Lewis, over a $22k unpaid debt.
As with many other players, as we will see, Hawkins genuine skill at the game is often overshadowed by bad behaviour towards and dodgy dealings with his fellow pros.
Chino Rheem, the reneging degen
Chino Rheem fits that description almost perfectly, an extremely talented who is about as trustworthy as a bag of rattlesnakes with a hole in it.
Last year, English pro Alex Goulder outed Rheem on Twitter for lying about his partypoker LIVE Barcelona bustout…
Chino Reem has told his backers/swaps that he busted with AA < AK aip. He actually busted cold 4bet jamming 95bbs with KTs into KK. Stay classy.
— Alex Goulder (@justalexok) April 9, 2018
There are at least two 100+ page 2plus2 poker forum threads about Rheem’s legendary scams, including when he scammed Canadian beer heir Bill Molson out of $40k after PokerStars ‘accidentally doubled’ an original $20k transfer to Rheem.
He was confronted in an epic viral video that saw a fellow cash game player, Harley Sorka, scream at Rheem:
“You owe the whole fucking city of Las Vegas money – you’re a bitch.”
Nicky Palma threatens his outer
When Tim Reilly had finally had enough of New York pro Nicky Palma and his serial scamming of his backers, he probably didn’t expect to get such high-level support, Canadian crusher Alex Foxen backing up Reilly’s claims…
Sad to say I was another victim of this. Thought it was a one off event and warned those whom I knew did business w him. Apologies to any who got got because I didn’t say anything publicly. I still like to think that Nicky p was never malicious in his actions but may be naive
— Alex Foxen (@WAFoxen) June 3, 2018
…but when Palma’s ex-girlfriend joined in with some very serious allegations of violence, sexual assault and robbery, things got very serious – Palma refuting the claims…
I see u around all the time your friendlyish with me but I sexually assaulted u and hit u? YOU hit ME. U slapped me in the face and I held u and let u know not to ever do that again. U also “ hung out “ with me after this.
— NICKY P (@nicholas_palma) June 5, 2018
…but threatening Reilly with ‘a slap in the face’ for his part in the public humiliation.
Getting back to this week’s story, Josh Arieh and Martin threatening to out the latest scumbag, it will be interesting to know if it’s one of our previous problem players, or a new kid on the block. We’ll keep you updated as and when information leaks out.
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