Between the years of 2007 and 2011, British poker player Darren Woods built his bankroll to more than $430k in major live poker events, including his claim to fame – a 2011 WSOP bracelet and $213,431. He earned countless more playing online poker, but according to reports, his means were not of the scrupulous sort. He has been accused of online poker fraud, involving collusion and the opening of fraudulent accounts.
Woods is facing 13 counts for offences that allegedly occurred between 2007 and 2012. Hailing from the village of Healing in Lincolnshire, England, the former UK poker pro denies all charges, as does his Iranian national father, Morteza Gharoon, implicated on 4 charges in connection with the allegations against Woods. But according to the prosecutor in the case, Alasdair Campbell, the evidence against the 29 year old poker player is irrefutable.
OnlinePokerRealMoney.co.uk tries to dispel some legal confusions stemming from passage of George Bush's UIGEA of 2006 . Federal status seems to depend on interpretation of the wire act and other laws which were crafted many years ago and which remained high level in nature. The United Kingdom has much clearer laws including their own real money gambling commission .
Campbell told the Sheffield Crown Court that Darren Woods was, “able to defeat the sophisticated methods employed by those companies to prevent multiple accounting and collusion.” He went on to explain that Woods opened multiple accounts, using the identities of real people to gain commissions at online poker sites that he otherwise would have no claim to. “This is dishonest”, declared Campbell.
Multi-accounting is not allowed at online poker sites, and can get a player banned if caught, but the action itself isn’t necessarily illegal by UK law. However, as Mr. Campbell explained to the court, “the problem was that the accounts were in other people’s names,” which is, in fact, identity fraud, and thoroughly illegal.
According to Campbell, Woods opened so many accounts with poker sites (and online payment processors) in other people’s names that he was able to generate £147,266 in commissions between 2010 and 2011 alone. Online poker sites generally offer commissions for various activities that involve driving traffic to a poker site; player referrals, affiliate programs, etc.
An accusation of premeditation in Woods’ actions was imposed by Campbell, who alleges that Darren went so far as to purchase numerous private networks in order to mask his true identity/location and fool the security systems of online poker operators, which have multiple techniques in place to detect multi-accounting.
The accusations against the UK poker pro first surfaced during his tenure as a professional player coach with PokerStrategy.com. On September 13, 2011, the poker training site publically suspended Woods from his coaching position and revealed the findings of the online poker community at TwoPlusTwo, which had been working together by comparing hand histories to unmask Darren “DooshCom” Woods for the colluding cheat that he (allegedly) was.
According to his faultfinders, he would appear on high stakes cash games with another anonymous player (the name was always different), getting big action from the ‘fishy’ mystery-player. That would attract other high stakes players to the table, who then became victims of Woods and his colluding cohort. After enough hand histories were compared from a multitude of victims, they discovered that the two would shove large stacks, even when both had nominal holdings, encouraging the victim to fold.
Woods virtually disappeared from the live and online poker scene since 2012 and is now a chef by trade. However, he did make an appearance at the PokerStars UKIPT Isle of Man earlier this month, cashing in two events. Woods finished 7th in the NLHE Turbo event for £380 and ran well in the Main Event, where he led in chips after Day 2 with 40 players remaining, but finished 30th for £2,340. UK poker pro Joshua Hart went on the win the UKIPT-IOM Main Event for £57,484.