Yet any other controversy has reached the poker international this week as two outstanding gamers accused professional Ian O’Hara of scamming them out of six figures and extra lately pocketing hundreds of bucks that used to be meant to pay for event entries.
Former poker professional and commentator Kane Kalas took to Twitter on Oct. 4 to make the allegations, which date again to 2020 and stem from backing preparations with himself, O’Hara and Jonathan Jaffe.
“Fabricating Data” to “Finance His Lifestyle”
In a four-part commentary, Kalas alleged that O’Hara, a Florida professional with $4 million in are living profits, consistent with The Hendon Mob, had reached out to him in 2020 for a event and money recreation stake “and we entered into a 50/50 staking arrangement.”
After “months of consistent losses,” he found out O’Hara used to be additionally being staked via fellow professional Jaffe, one thing that used to be by no means disclosed to Kalas.
While O’Hara wasn’t over-selling motion, Kalas become suspicious about “the extent of Ian’s losses” and the truth that he did not expose his staking courting with Jaffe, each of which he mentioned “raised questions.”
“After reviewing the numbers, Jon and I discovered that Ian was reporting conflicting information regarding wins/losses,” wrote Kalas. “The discrepancies were far too numerous and egregious to be typos or errors; in fact, there were frequent instances of Ian reporting a game to one of us that was never even reported to the other.”
Kalas additional alleged that “there were instances of Ian reporting losses that were later verified to be wins.”
“It became clear that Ian was fabricating data on the state, in order to finance his lifestyle,” he wrote.
All mentioned and finished, O’Hara allegedly “scammed us to the tune of a combined mid six-figures.”
“A Pattern of Untruthful Behavior”
After turning into mindful of the placement, Kalas and Jaffe terminated the stake and faced O’Hara, who “assured us that he had never done anything like this before but had recently suffered particularly bad circumstances in life.”
“He promised to repay us the amount that he had stolen from us and promised there was a 0% chance that anything like this would ever happen again,” Kalas wrote. “Ian pleaded with us to not go public with this information and give him time to make things right.”
Since they each discovered O’Hara to be “genuinely remorseful” however had been nonetheless involved he “might resort to unethical behavior again in the future,” the 2 agreed not to pass public with the ideas at the situation that O’Hara “make consist payments” to them to repay his money owed and divulge to them “ALL transactional business Ian conducts within poker.”
“For some time, things seemed to be on the up-and-up,” wrote Kalas, who famous that O’Hara reported all of his poker transactions and repaid round 40% of his debt.
That modified this week, consistent with Kalas, who alleged that “Ian recently sold action for the Poker Masters tournament series, which he never disclosed to me and Jon.”
Kalas additional claimed that O’Hara did not even play within the Poker Masters occasions, however slightly “sold action, sent screenshots of old tournament ticket receipts along with pictures of a random stack in the tournament, then claimed he had busted.”
“He lied about playing the tournament in order to pocket the action,” mentioned Kalas. “At this point, Ian has demonstrated a pattern of untruthful, manipulative, and destructive behavior.”
Kalas mentioned he believed O’Hara to be “truly remorseful” however added that “it is now clear that his remorse fails to outweigh his selfishly opportunistic tendencies” and “strongly advise(d) against doing business with Ian.”
O’Hara Comes Clean
O’Hara made no effort to disclaim Kalas’ allegations. In reality, he answered to Kalas tweet on Oct. 5 and mentioned he used to be “very sorry to all I have (affected) with my decisions.”
“I made these choices on my own and I must now face the consequences,” O’Hara wrote. “I will do everything in my power to rectify the situation as much as possible. I will do better in every aspect of life moving forward.”
@KaneKalas I’m very sorry to all I’ve effected with my choices. I made those alternatives by myself and I should now f… https://t.co/IkN50HmbNo
A handful of poker gamers mentioned they had been unhappy to look the allegations towards O’Hara, together with Doug Polk, who mentioned he “liked Ian from our few interactions and he seemed like an upstanding guy.”
Brandon Shack-Harris agreed that O’Hara “seems like a talented kid” however thanked Kalas “for bringing it to the communities attention.”
Shaun Deeb, who had up to now been publicly important of O’Hara, used to be much less sympathetic and mentioned he “feel(s) bad for his (O’Hara’s) most recent scammed people.”
“But this is why you don’t let people rob Peter to pay Paul,” Deeb tweeted.
O’Hara is an ordinary at each the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and World Poker Tour (WPT). His greatest rating got here in 2015 in a $25,400 High Roller on the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in Hollywood, FL, the place he completed 2d for $527,313 after a heads-up care for Jason Mercier.
O’Hara didn’t reply to a request for remark from PokerInformation on the time of newsletter.