Poker Pro Matt Marafioti linked to Online Poker Cheat by Hacking Scam!

With over $2 million in live poker tournament winnings and an impressive online poker resume, Matt Marafioti is widely considered one of the better pro players out there. However, the Canadian’s name has been dragged through the mud over the past couple of days after an alleged Skype conversation between him and another player was leaked on the TwoPlusTwo forums.

The 2p2 thread begins with a posted Skype conversation (sent to poster via email) between Marafioti and a Swedish online poker player named Samar Rahman. This already leads people to jump to conclusions because Rahman has been accused of cheating players such as Patrik Antonius in the past through elaborately-placed computer viruses. But things get worse when the conversation alludes to hacking into other players’ accounts so Marafioti and Rahman can see opponents’ hole cards.

Seeing as how it’s possible to manipulate a Skype conversation before posting it to the internet, it’s tough to verify 100% accuracy in this matter. However, most people in the TwoPlusTwo thread feel Marafioti and Rahman’s conversation about cheating other players follows a realistic flow for an IM conversation.

Perhaps more damning are the character issues here because both Marafioti and Rahman are pretty questionable people. Marafioti has gained quite a bit of attention for his melodramatic twitter posts and incessant cursing while Rahman is rumored to be a skilled computer hacker – as mentioned before.

Of course, none of this is evidence that these two online poker pros definitely conspired to cheat people. However, it is worth mentioning that the TwoPlusTwo thread has been kept up, which means they either feel there is some validity behind the accusations or – at the very least – they believe the topic is worthy of discussion.
  My take: Every since I wrote the book "Dirty Poker" back in '06, I've been reporting and blogging about all the various online poker cheating scandals that I originally predicted in the book. One of the things I did write about back then was hacking accounts to cheat online poker players. This is nothing new, and despite the article's mention that "of course, none of this is evidence that these two online poker pros definitely conspired to cheat people," it's pretty good evidence for me.