This is a thread about Damian Copeland (Spungeh on pokerstrategy, stars and ipoker) scamming multiple people through online and live stake deals. Here are a couple of facts:
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1. mindan sent damian 21205 EUR total for live and online staking.
2. USD500 went for coaching, which is 388EUR
3. Damian entered 2165GBP into live reporting app, which is 2557EUR
4. Damian owes mindan 18260EUR
5. Damian promised he would enter all the fluctuations about the live stake into the application, but he didn't. Therefore, we are counting only the money recorded in the app as lost.
6. Damian was asked multiple times to request hand histories from pokerstars and ipoker and forward the e-mails to mindan. He either did not request them or did not send them. In any case, mindan did not receive the hand histories, which means that the stakee cannot prove that he lost any money playing poker. He had 5 days to provide the hand histories which is more than enough, but he did not send anything.
7. Damian was asked to provide skrill transactions, poker room transactions, credit card bills and bank transfer transactions, but he refused to do so/did not send any of those things to mindan.
8. Damian kept asking for topping up the stake amounts to 100BI, because »he had tilt issues otherwise«.
9. Damian did not keep exact track of his results, he was in fact very inaccurate, late, vague and unprofessional about his updates.
10. When we were in Birmingham, there was no sign of him having a separate bankroll for poker and other living expenses, such as cabs and restaurants.
11. He said he found out that »he lost more than he thought« in live games, not providing any proof or accurate data about that. It is hardly believable that he even tracked anything himself as he didn't have separate bankrolls.
12. On multiple occasions, we have found damian providing us with inaccurate data about his living expenses. He said to one person that he has a big separate life roll while telling the other person that he's completely broke and needs more money. On the other hand, he lives in a penthouse with expensive rent and eats at fairly expensive restaurants daily. He said he has a student loan that he lives off, but we cannot know whether he is lieing or not as he is not willing to provide us with bank information and does not track the staking money data
13. When we started pressuring Damian, he started seeking excuses for being broke, ill, having problems at university etc. And avoiding returning money.
14. Damian was asked to return the remainder of the live stake roll (which should have been a couple of thousand EUR, but he avoided it by saying that there would be too many transfer fees and that he would just return it all in winnings.
15. After the stake was paused, Damian was seen playing NL50HU and also NL400HU on Pokerstars (we saw him lose a couple of thousand $ there). He said he »got money from his mother« and played with »his own roll«. So essentially he ran into some money and didn't work on returning it to mindan but rather gambled with it on his own.
16. When Damian was asked to end the stake, return the money and provide data, he asked if he could return the money in small % each month. This is completely unreasonable as he should be able to return all the money that is left from the stake immediately at any time.
17. Damian said he would provide data to other stakers about live staking in February and March, but on the other hand told mindan he would not even play any live poker in February and March. He also later told mindan that »other stakers backed out« and asked for more money from him, and the other stakers now confirmed that they didn't back out but Damian aparrently »lost all the money«.
18. Since Damian was found to have lied to many people on many different occasions, we cannot trust his graphs/hands from the PC ad they easily could have been purged/modified to his advantage. Again, this could have been solved by him sending us the hand histories, which he did not do.
19. Damian also played random Sunday Million tournaments etc. During the stake, apparrently »with his own money«. Again, we cannot know this since he doesn't have his bankrolls separated in any way.
20. Damian also asked mindan to invest into some shady businesses, asking him for 20k EUR, promising him huge returns without any real proof.
21. Once mindan wanted to get the exact hand histories and set up the skype call with Damian to discuss how the stake would progress, Damian prioritized everything over the skype call. He went out to eat, to cinema with girlfriend, etc., said he broke his headphones and didn't put in the minimal effort to get new ones (he has a shopping mall 5 minutes away from his appartment). There was always an excuse to not do the skype call and provide the staker with the required data. This behaviour was completely unprofessional and wasted a lot of staker's time and nerves.
22. Damian also did a lot of live travelling to Nottingham and other places, we do not know where he got the money for that since he was supposed to be broke (under stake).
23. When Damian was asked to provide the hand histories for the last couple of months, he said that he deletes them frequently as »they slow down his PC«. He has an alienware laptop and a comparable PC, so that is completely not true. On the other hand, he mentioned that he has 10million+ hands on people at pokerstars, which aparrently doesn't slow down his computer, but 50k hands do?
24. Damian said that 1000EUR got mystically lost between Moneybookers and Pokerstars. He said he inquired about it, but got no response/never provided any. This has happenned a couple of months ago and he still has not provided any proof whether this has actually happened.
25. Damian actually must owe mindan more than the 18k amount, since they split the winnings on rakeback as well and mindan never received a part of those winnings.
26. Damian has no proof that he actually transferred the remaining money of the live stake into a pokerstars account. There was supposed to be at least 5k left, which we have no idea where they are.
27. Damian also played roulette and live poker in casinos in Nottingham, probably with mindan's money, out of the stake agreement.
28. Damian said he had $4400 left online + what was left live, but the next time they talked he said that only $700-1k were left online, so $3.5k disappeared?
29. When asked about the current bankroll, Damian said that he can tell the staker with the current bankroll, but that he cannot say how it got there, because it was aparrently impossible to add every hand of live games in the database. When we were in Birmingham he assured us that it was really easy to do that and boasted about many different features of the app. He should at least enter the data after each session, which he didn't.
30. Damian also staked another player for poker. He was on a stake himself, broke and then staked someone else, most likely with staker's money.
31. Damian used TwiceT's name as a referrence that he is a trustworthy person without TwiceT's knowledge or conscent, TwiceT never actually recommended Damian to anyone due to shady staking experience in the past.
32. Damian used TwiceT's reputation and name to convince stakers to buy his action. He said that TT invested more than 6 figures into him and that he constantly coaches him, which were complete lies, as seen from the following chat histories.
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[Donnerstag, 10. Jänner 2013 02:42] Damian:
<<< yeah, well appart from trust i have people that can confirm im an all right guy
TwiceT
probably the highest on the list
[14.5.2013 9:40:21] TwiceT: [25. januar 2013 17:54] TwiceT:
<<< do you remember your staking update frequency? every 4 months. suddenly we were broke[25. januar 2013 17:55] TwiceT:
<<< nope sry, you think thats too easy. you dont just get invited to the hs scene
as a complete random[25. januar 2013 17:54] TwiceT:
<<< yep, but i will never suggest them to stake you as long as i dont know your skills, have bad staking experience with you ..... way too risky for me, no need to do that[25. januar 2013 17:49] TwiceT:
<<< sry, for those amounts of money nobody will trust you
takes a long long time within the scene to get those live game stakings
[14.5.2013 9:42:49 | Edited 9:45:43] TwiceT: obv i would not and have never said - in terms of poker - that he is i) good ii) trustworthy iii) legit .....
yep we invested quite a bit in a business venture where he is involved as well. not 6 figures though, below. actually to be correct, there has been a merge with a completely different project. his project got 30k eur effectively. to be even more precise, given the shares he got, owns 10800 eur of equity. so to say it in normal language, we invested 10800 eur in him directly. thats quite far away from a 6 digit number, just to be correct. i will clarify that in the thread one time becasue i obv cant let those statements be there uncommented
we talk since 14 months or so, in between sometimes randomly about poker, but to no extent at all. just a random hand every few weeks. and he got coached 2 times for 90 mins (with mindan's moniez, which i didnt know). so 180 mins of real extensive coaching, all the rest a bit poker trash talking in between.
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We want Spungeh to write in this thread and publicly announce how he is going to pay mindan back his money. In case he does not do that, we will have to use other sources to get the money back from him. If you know Spungeh personally or have any more information about the past staking experiences with him, please get in contact with me.
good luck to everyone involved.