That perennial source of useful player information, the twoplustwo forum, has again seen aggrieved players focusing the spotlight on troubled online poker operator Lock Poker.
Players at the site have been awaiting pay-outs for over a year in many cases, prompting some to sell their account balances at discounted rates just to get something out amid fears of a sudden crash.
Piling on the pressure for the operator to fly right and meet its obligations, player IHasTehNutz has continued to label the operator as a “deposit only ‘Ponzi scheme’ site” that owes its players around $3.2 million in still unpaid cash-outs and account balances.
IHasTehNutz has been monitoring aggrieved players and the operator for well over a year and has assembled numbers to back up his assertions, and in his latest twoplustwo report he documents 394 players owed over $941,000 in pending payouts…most of whom have been waiting well over a calendar year to receive their money.
Exacerbating the situation, 205 of those players have remaining balances beyond their unpaid withdrawals totaling over $2.2 million collectively, with over $1.7 million owed to players resident outside of the United States.
That may not be a complete picture, either; IHasTehNutz can only include proved statistics submitted to him by players, and there may be more of the unpaid out there.
According to IHasTehNutz:
* The last payout reported as received by a player occurred in April 2014.
* 340 of the 394 players on the report have waited 365 days or more for their payouts from Lock Poker.
* 193 players have waited at least 500 days; 18 have waited 600+ days (longest wait is 694 days).
* The last non-US player to receive a payout from Lock Poker occurred in November 2013.
* Only 12 payouts from Lock Poker have been reported received in all of 2014. IHasTehNutz recorded 232 Lock Poker payouts from posters on twoplustwo and other forums from May 2013 to December 2013.
Lock’s uncommunicative stance serves to create more speculation on the financial situation of the operator; for example late last year the poker information site Pokerfuse reported that Lock allegedly owed a significant amount of money to the Revolution network which it had exited in October 2013.
Earlier this year the Poker Players Alliance tried to assist players by requesting Lock to provide assurances regarding its ability to meet its player commitments. According to IHasTehNutz, there was no public response.