More Online Poker Cheat Scams Coming Because of World Economic Crisis?

Will the current worldwide financial crisis bring out more online poker scams from the woodwork? Probably, but that doesn’t mean more of them are going on. To understand what I mean, let’s take a look at what has been happening in the financial-scam world since the global economic fiasco took hold in late 2008. There were many bank scams and frauds that have come to light since then, but to date three gigantic ones have dominated the news, all of them involving billions of dollars. The first that hit was the Bernard Madoff investment pyramid scheme, which among its victims bagged a few online-poker-pioneer billionaires, for whom I don’t feel very sorry for as most of these people scammed their way to their own riches way before the advent of online poker. Then there were the UBS bank scam and the Allen Stanford investment scam, both of which surfaced only last week. The Stanford scam may wipe out the majority of Antigua’s finances before it’s all said and done.

But this does not mean that suddenly huge bank and investment scams are happening in an abundance we have never seen before. All it does mean is that more financial scams are being exposed in these very difficult times when people across the world need their money and decide to withdraw their funds from various investment accounts, and increasingly are finding that there’s little or no money in the accounts.

The same thing is bound to happen in online poker, which is a major billion-dollar industry. The UltimateBet scam notwithstanding, we will probably see more big online poker scams come to light as the financial crunch continues because online poker players, just like people in the financial world, will be watching their money closer and at times calling in their funds from their online poker accounts.

But remember, don’t panic when you hear about the next online poker scam or the next one after that. It won’t be an indicator of a new rush of online poker scams but rather the surfacing of ones that had been going on awhile, most likely before the financial crisis hit.