Japanese high stakes poker player, Masaaki Kagawa, is one of nine people to be arrested by the Chiba Prefectural Police, in Japan, after his alleged involvement in a Malware e-mail scam that raided Android devices.
I first set eyes on Masaaki Kagawa when he took part in the €98,500 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) Super High Roller Reload event in Monte Carlo back in 2012. The 38-strong field was divided into two distinct sects: the professionals and the whales. We had Kagawa pegged down as a whale, and it seems a lot of his money arrived into his wallet through some rather unsavory channels.
Kagawa’s ties with poker have catapulted his name to the front of the headlines, after becoming one of nine men arrested in Japan for allegedly operating an Android malware ring and a scam-dating site. Press reports believe the group had earned around $3.9m through the scams.
It’s believe that Kagawa and his team distributed spam that included e-mails containing links to download Androis.Enesoluty; a Trojan horse designed to steal information from mobile devices and send it to a remote server. It’s believed the malware was used to collate around 37m e-mail addresses from around 810,000 address books.
The money was earned by using the e-mail addresses to direct people to a fake online dating service called Sakura, which cost money to use. The nine await their fate.
Former city banker is given a five-year jail term for conning friends out of more than £6m in a football betting scam.
If you have been in the game long enough then you are wary when you hear the words ‘a sure thing.’ Unfortunately, 138 investors have had to learn the hard way after succumbing to the wily ways of Darren Thompson.
The 40-year old from Whitstable, Kent in the UK has just been sentenced to five years in prison after convincing investors to part with over £6m in cash during a six-year period, so he could invest the money in a ‘guaranteed’ football gambling syndicate.
The courts heard how Thompson created a set of fake graphs, and bank statements, to convince his investors that profits were on the up and up. In the meantime Thompson’s bets were losing week after week, and the money was drying up quicker than a frogs skin in the desert.
Thompson put £4.1m of the £6m into several betting accounts and lost £3m of that money. At the same time he spent seven figures on holidays, luxury gifts and even his own lavish wedding.
“Some of their money was invested into bets but they were never successful as Thompson did not make any profit during the time he ran the syndicate. The rest of the money was spent by Thompson on holidays, his wedding and expensive cars while some of his investors struggled to make ends meet as a result.” Said Det Con Stuart Champion.
