Simpsons Creator Dishes Dirt About Poker Scams

News of strange poker-related crimes continues to roll in with an especially out there plot involving a friend of “The Simpsons” co-creator Sam Simon surfacing just this week. Simon was originally approached by a Las Vegas newspaper to give his personal opinion on Reid’s proposed poker legislation, but the interview revealed a whole lot more than Simon’s negative stance on Reid’s bill.

Simon, like so many other wealthy semi-celebs, is a fan of the game and decided to test his skills online at the cash tables of the renowned PokerStars poker room. After losing repeatedly, Simon gave up on his poker ambitions only to later learn that he had been the victim of a two-player collusion scheme. PokerStars refunded Simon’s losses, but the producer insisted that he’s long since lost all interest in playing online.

Part of Simon’s decision to walk away from his poker hobby was fueled by another, more recent scam that left one of his high stakes card buddies out $4 million. While Sam Simon’s incident had been the result of the most common form of collusion, the fleecing of his unnamed friend had been a more thorough operation. Simon explained that his friend, already an accomplished cash player, was on an inexplicable losing streak.

When the poker room failed to uncover any wrongdoing on their end, Simon’s friend did a little investigating of his own. What he found is a surprising new low for poker cheats. Players familiar with the friend’s poker interests as well as his screen name actually broke into his house and installed a small spy cam near his computer, allowing them to see his hole cards whenever he played. They would then log on from their own computers, join the table(s) he was active at, and use their inside information of his hands to steal his stack.

Simon didn’t elaborate on when either event occurred, though he did say that he’s totally done with online poker. It’s easy to see why Simon no longer trusts online poker or some of its players, but he’s still surprisingly supportive of getting it legalized. On the other hand, he doesn’t think that Senator Harry Reid’s proposal is the way to go. In fact, after detailing his negative encounters, Simon went on to say that Reid’s bill was actually “the most obvious, corrupt, terrible thing” he’d ever heard of, primarily because it would give exclusive operating rights to some of Reid’s known campaign donors.

Related Entries