It appears that the trend of hackers hitting up poker player Venmo accounts for a quick buck is still ongoing. Mike Matusow claims to be the latest in the string of poker pros to find their money has taken flight.
The poker pro tweeted at Venmo's Twitter account saying, “I got hacked for thousands and can’t get a straight answer from anyone is this how you treat all of your customers, how is it possible I cannot speak to a human being when there is thousands of dollars stolen?”
Venmo does not seem to have responded to this latest breach yet. However, when a similar hack hit Daniel Negreanu Tom Hunter, a spokesman for Venmo's parent company Paypal, told Bloomberg magazine in an emailed statement that “the security of customer account information is always a top priority for Venmo and PayPal. And we take all the necessary steps to protect our customers. We take these situations very seriously and work quickly and diligently to support customers, mitigate any impact and resolve the situation if issues arise.”
However, it's now a few weeks later, and Matusow is subject to the same issues, and is claiming the same sluggish response.
Venmo money, Venmo problems
When Daniel Negreanu was hit back in November, the hackers had the audacity to try and use his Venmo to pay for an Uber right after emptying his account.
“The dude who robbed my @venmo@VenmoSupport account has some balls,” Negreanu tweeted. “Cleaned it out and then still tried to pay for a $43 Uber ride on my dime. You just stole $15k dude, and you still need to get me for $43 more? Ain’t you a piece of work.”
This was part of a spate of attacks that also hit Vanessa Selbst, her wife, and Erik Seidel. Both Seidel and Selbst reported receiving requests from suspicious accounts before they were hacked.
In one case the account used the name of Steve O Dwyer, another poker player, who Isaac Haxton claims "never had a Venmo account."
Both Seidel and Selbst's problems, like Matusow's, were drastically increased by difficulties getting in touch with Venmo's customer support.
Seidel tweeted that he "tried calling, emailing & contacting [Venmo] with no response."
Selbst, unable to stop the hack even as she could see it coming, transferred her funds to her wife's account. A few hours later she reported that this account had also been hacked.
In a series of tweets she posted: "Shortly after receiving the weird @Venmo request, my account was hacked. I now have no access to it. [...] The fact that I saw my @venmo hack coming, and still couldn’t prevent it (no 2FA, seriously?) is a security catastrophe. [...] Now my wife, who I transferred my money to, got her account hacked. So much for emptying my funds. [Venmo] please contact me, this is a complete joke."
Mike Matusow seems even more vulnerable than these other players. His bankroll seems to be in eternal escrow.
Before the election, he claimed his bankroll was about $20k. Of that, according to his previous tweets, $10k is on Daniel Negreanu to beat Doug Polk. That money is looking like it might be in jeopardy. Another $5k has gone out the window on betting Trump will win.
He's had a rough 2020. An ardent anti-Democrat, he watched his side take a pasting in the election. And he seems to have lost some of his faith in Trump in light of the way Trump has handled his defeat.
He made some of his election day losses back by betting that Trump would dig in and refuse to concede. Phil Hellmuth took that bet and lost. Has anyone checked Hellmuth's Venmo history?
Featured image source: Flickr
