Rob Mercer accused of terminal cancer Gofundme scam which netted up to $40k

[Small_Banana]

I know Vertucci had a very successful run maxing out elderly people’s credit cards. But if it weren’t for Feldman making HCL what it is, this guy has the longest string of Ls in the poker world. He has to take much of the responsibility for the traction this whole thing got by putting his failed podcast behind it. If it comes out he didn’t do any due diligence and just pushed people to donate $1,000s of dollars…there should be some culpability for him. But I’m sure he will have a nice excuse and get a free pass because he co-owns HCL. He always does. Guy is a total gasbag.

so many scammers gravitate towards vertucci, and he amplifies these scammers tremendously.
this is not the same complaint as them allowing scammers / criminals on the stream.

vertucci is a unique mix of idiot, conman, and narcissist. he seems to attract people that share some or all of those traits

i listened to him address it on a twitter space yesterday, and his message was 'this stuff happens, what can you do, move on'. this message was echo'd by vertuccis side kick / yes man josh maciello (sp?).
this crew that vertucci has assembled around him are so used to sweeping scams and shady deals under the rug - they seem to be doing it reflexively here.

btw, anyone heard from RIP?

Josh Maccielo is a scammer. He put in a fake bid to buy the Dodgers when they were for sale. He has had many failed (scam) businesses and been sued many times by people he duped into investing with him. And Maccielo is not even his real last name. He pretends to be Italian but is most likely Jewish.

[JeffDime]

He even got the really sick guy. Right at the payout cage. Think this was when everything was running out and he didn’t bother even letting the dude get his payout before being on his ass. Really shitty.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/CodyDaniels88/status/1693445883608924381

[JeffDime]

The funniest part of this is all the people on Twitter who are saying..."Well, when he said this sex worker fucked him for free that's when I started to smell a rat". Really? The fact he claimed he was getting laid for free is when you got suspicious? The dude is that ugly?

For me it was when he posted a photo of himself hitting a Royal flush betting black chips playing pai gow. I even copied that tweet when I saw it on my feed and sent it to a friend. Lesson learned...wish I screenshot it.

I already see the attacks and claims of sexism because some guys promoted this nonsense and were critical of Lafay. Druff didn't promote this at all. He was getting absolutely assaulted on social media over the Lafay stuff. Veronica was telling people to unfollow him. Gasbag Vertucci had the fucker on his failed podcast. Totally understandable for Druff to steer clear of this and I really hope people will understand the difference between promoting and staying silent.

On an unrelated note... Big Huni has a third cousin, twice removed, who needs some sheet rock work done. He would help out but he didn't have all of himself in the Venom with his 800 plus K score. Can't find the GoFundme link right now.

[Shizzmoney]

At this point, if a poker player says they have cancer and ask for money... then folks have to start asking for a blood sample so they can run PK analysis on a flow cytometer to confirm before even thinking of shelling cash out.

Also, asking for a friend: did this guy mention who the porn star, that was a part of this story, is?

[Dan Druff]

I'm not sure if he mentioned who the porn star was. I don't think he did, because nobody seems to know her identity. Because the story was almost surely made up (or a big part left out!)

The whole "sexism" and "hypocrisy" allegations being slung at me are complete bullshit. I have a very long history of calling out dudes who act shady. Sometimes I'm the one leading the charge in exposing them, even when it has nothing personal to do with me or my friends.

It's very clear why I sat this one out. I picked up a ton of psychos harassing me over the Lafay thing, and some were incredibly emotional/dedicated to the cause. It was incredibly stressful, which was why I finally bowed out of the whole thing after like 6-7 weeks of insanity. After that, I swore I would never question another cancer gofundme, even if it looked shady. There are just too many who react emotionally, thinking of a close friend or relative who died of cancer, and vilify me as a cold hearted asshole who likes attacking cancer patients. They don't stop to ask questions or consider the obvious -- that scammers often use claims of cancer or other illnesses to rip people off.

So I was done doing that going forward. It's just too hard, and I'm just doing this scam exposure thing as a voluntary public service. It's not my job, and I'm not obligated to put myself through hell to be the designated guy to question cancer gofundmes while everyone else stays silent.

[Dan Druff]

Snoopdoug posted Rob's statement.

Get ready to decipher Deeb-like writing:

[Tankazoo]

Im on the side that he is full of shit
however, I also despise Deeb as he comes across as extremely arrogant, and im not referring to this, Im talking many other times.

[Dan Druff]

That story sounds incredibly bullshitty and unlikely.

He should've just run off and said nothing.

[JeffDime]

That story sounds incredibly bullshitty and unlikely.

He should've just run off and said nothing.

It reads to me like a “Fuck You, I got you suckers” to me.

BTW, watched parts of the Only Friends podcast and just extremely disappointed with Berkey. Christian Soto was really the only guy who would challenge Berkey when he got on his soap box. These guys just never really challenge the narrative he’s pushing. I think that’s probably what Berkey wants. But take Soto out of the intro already if he’s not a part of it.

And I got to say…what is with a 25 minute hand history of some cash game hand he played today? Literally no one gives a shit. He should know that. Self indulgent. And what about Vertucci? The guy who pushed this the most and who Berkey has heavily criticized in the past….we don’t hear his name. Just a major disappointment.

That Hayley Hanna was right about the YouTube chat being way over moderated. They censor people simply disagreeing with the narrative of the show. I won’t be tuning back in for a while.

[Dan Druff]

I agree. Highly disappointing. The only good point he raised was that people with a following shouldn't amplify these gofundmes for strangers, as someone with 50 followers would otherwise never get this scam off the ground.

However, he said some pretty head-scratching things during the show. Note that the quotes shown below are not direct quotes, but me paraphrasing from memory:

1) "We shouldn't give negative attention to these things when they come out, because poker is a savvy community, and people will figure it out anyway." What?! If the community was so savvy, stories like this wouldn't exist. Furthermore, negative attention has never helped anything like this succeed. For example, in the case of Jami, her donations were rocketing up prior to the Gofundme being criticized, and then they just about stopped cold.

2) "The scrutinizing of Jami's Gofundme and not Rob's had a sexist element to it." Totally false. The scrutinizing of Jami occurred because she already had a questionable reputation, and because the Gofundme already had some verifiable lies and contradictions (regardless of whether or not the cancer part was true). Rob did not have any reputation (good or bad), and seemingly had people verifying his story. Apples and oranges. No sexism involved. Such a lazy take to say such a thing.

3) "If you're going to make an identity out of someone who is outspoken about scams, you are hypocritical if you call out one thing but not another." Say what? If I spent time calling out everything I saw, I'd have no time to do anything else in my life. I'm not being paid to do this. I call out scams and shady behavior as a service to the community. I do not owe an investigation to anyone, or of anyone. I tried to call out a cancer Gofundme in February. I took a ton of harassment for it, while most big names in poker quietly sat out and let me and a few others draw all the harassment. I decided I'm not going through that again. LOL at Berkey believing that I'm obligated to go full force about another cancer gofundme, and draw the ire all over again from psychos on Twitter, just because I did it once before.

4) "We don't know the motivation of those calling out Jami. Hopefully it was to protect the community, but we can't be sure." Again, what?! I've been investigating poker/gambling scams since the 2000s, and never asked for a thing in return. What do you mean you don't know my motivation? So with all the other scams/scandals I called out, I was trying to help the community, but with Jami it was just because I had an opportunity to dunk on a woman? Give me a break.



As the final kick in the ass, he took this tweet out of context:

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/status/1693157947818610889


Berkey criticized this as a form of gloating on my part. Again, what?! This was a joke aimed at Matusow regarding Mike's telling a (supposedly) terminal patient to get well. So I was joking that now he can feel better because the guy isn't really terminal. I wasn't gloating about anything, nor did I actually feel the situation was "good news".

Why was I even a part of this story? Why was Slay? We weren't the ones amplifying or promoting this guy. I never said a word about Rob once his gofundme appeared, and Slay dropped a single retweet, as far as I remember. For some reason, we were a lot more of the focus of that Berkey segment than the actual people promoting Rob (whom I agree aren't to blame either -- just fell for a con man's BS.)



I thought I had a good relationship with Berkey, and was very disappointed with his coverage today.

[Dan Druff]

[Dan Druff]

Going to have Cody Daniels on the next radio.

Cody Daniels was the other guy Nick Vertucci promoted on that stream. 28-year-old Daniels has had intestinal issues since childhood which have seen him spend most of his life in the hospital. He got to know Lexi Gavin, who then got him on Poker Night in America. This led to his story becoming better known, and this year Vertucci had a charity stream to raise money for Daniels for the WSOP Main Event. He does not have cancer, but obviously his life has been quite tough with these major health issues.

Unlike Mercer, there are no red flags with Daniels. He's been known in the community for longer, and he seems like a good guy.

Also unlike Mercer, Daniels did well with his 2023 Main Event. He ran to mid-late Day 4, scoring $30k for 635th place in that huge 10,041 field. We had very similar results, as I finished 568th, but I did not play with him.

But here's the really sad part.

Hearing how devastated Mercer supposedly was for "letting everyone down" with his Day 1 bustout, Daniels promised Mercer 10% of his winnings as a complete freeroll. Of course, Mercer was thrilled to accept it, and laughably said that he had planned to surprise Daniels with something similar, had the situation been reversed. Yeah right.

Anyway, Mercer met him right at the cage when Daniels was picking up his $30k. Daniels gave him $2500 (I'm not sure why not $3000 -- we'll ask him). So now Daniels knows that he was ripped off too, as he only offered Mercer the freeroll due to his terminal condition and supposed distraught reaction to busting.

I heard Daniels on Twitter Spaces tonight, and he sounded like a great guy -- basically the man everyone wished Mercer was.

We will talk to him more about this on the next PFA Radio.

[Dan Druff]

I actually think there are three fairly equal possibilities regarding what Mercer's initial motivations were.

Theory #1 is that he's just a cold-hearted scammer (without cancer) who saw an opportunity during the Lafay controversy, and presented himself as the opposite of her, with a semi-long con in mind. In this scenario, he would have been planning the entire way to ask for stakes to the WSOP, after first feigning for a few months that he would refuse anything offered to him.

Theory #2 is that he has a lesser form of cancer, perhaps something in Stage 1, and was initially jealous/annoyed that Jami scored $17k from her Gofundme. In this scenario, his initial motivation would have simply been to bash her out of jealousy, and to greatly embellish his own condition to make his point stronger. Then, after being part of the community for a few months, and becoming envious of all the WSOP updates he kept seeing and hearing about on Twitter, he decided to cash in on his good reputation.

Theory #3 is that he started off as a bored troll (without cancer) who just wanted to inject himself into the Jami controversy. In this scenario, after initially having no plans to ask for anything from anyone, he realized that he actually had built enough of a following/reputation to where he could score a WSOP stake from people. So he went from troll to scammer.



If I had to guess which one was most likely, I'd still say #1.

[Mission146]

That story sounds incredibly bullshitty and unlikely.

He should've just run off and said nothing.

It's honestly quite simple: if he dies of cancer inside of three months, then we will owe him an apology.

[JeffDime]

It’s all about money/raising profile/engagement for most of the parties commenting on this situation. Berkey is doing things backwards. Narrative is Lafay (woman) is scrutinized and Mercer (man/swamp creature) was not. Now go back and find some “examples” of the hypocrisy. Now Druff is an easy target. He’s not doing this for money. Druffs not going to pay Above the Felt to sponsor Berkey for anything. So Druff made this tweet we can take out of context. Let’s bury him.

Why take it easy on Vertucci/HCL? Vertucci passed the bag around for this degenerate to play high limit pai gow. Well HCL is the highest viewed product in poker right now. Would Berkey maybe be a bit gun shy because his representation also represents Rampage? A frequent player on HCL livestreams. Including their Million Dollar Game. Maybe it’s best to play nice. This is best for business. Just bury that Todd guy.

Yes, I’m speculating but I hope I’m right. Because if Berkey really believes all the shit coming out of his mouth…yikes. Going forward at least when someone comes forward asking for coin it can be standard procedure to have them show documentation. Redact what you have to but let’s get the diagnosis and prognosis…we can go from there.

Let’s picture a world where Mercer is on this twitter space a few months back. Druff, who according to Berkey is obligated to, gets on the Space and says “Rob, with all respect, have you provided documentation of your illness? Because the community has been scammed before”. Holy fucking hell Todd would probably get immediately booted out of the space and everyone would say what an uncaring asshole he was.

Probably nothing would have changed except Todd getting absolute hell for a few months…and now he would be proven correct but the damage would already be done. It wouldn’t have been worth it. The scam would have most likely succeeded. See that wasn’t to tough to imagine how it would have went down.

Anyways, at least going forward someone asking for documentation will be taken seriously and this nonsense can be curtailed. But a few months ago all it would have done is most likely given Druff 2 more months of harassment.

[SlowRoll]

Josh Maccielo is a scammer. He put in a fake bid to buy the Dodgers when they were for sale. He has had many failed (scam) businesses and been sued many times by people he duped into investing with him. And Maccielo is not even his real last name. He pretends to be Italian but is most likely Jewish.

josh was in a space when this was discussed and spent a solid 5 minutes pushing his "cancer curing CBD products" which he sent to help cure mercer's (allegedly) fake cancer.

people in the space mentioned that as soon as josh started sending this stuff to mercer (and was VERY public about it), he immediately began posting about how he feels "100% better"

....

if you listen to josh maccielo talk about anything for more than 30 seconds the red flags pop up everywhere. this guy is scum and is the epitome of a guy who would hang around vertucci.... think 'beanz' with no self awareness about how shitty of a person he is.

it would not be surprising at all of josh pushed mercer to make the claims of feeling so much better.


maybe i will try to track down these spaces conversations at some point this week - it seemed so odd for macciello to use the discussion about cancer fraud to sell his product. i wonder if its the same product that other "stage 4 cancer patient" used to cure her stage 4 cancer...?

[SlowRoll]

It’s all about money/raising profile/engagement for most of the parties commenting on this situation. Berkey is doing things backwards. Narrative is Lafay (woman) is scrutinized and Mercer (man/swamp creature) was not. Now go back and find some “examples” of the hypocrisy. Now Druff is an easy target. He’s not doing this for money. Druffs not going to pay Above the Felt to sponsor Berkey for anything. So Druff made this tweet we can take out of context. Let’s bury him.

Why take it easy on Vertucci/HCL? Vertucci passed the bag around for this degenerate to play high limit pai gow. Well HCL is the highest viewed product in poker right now. Would Berkey maybe be a bit gun shy because his representation also represents Rampage? A frequent player on HCL livestreams. Including their Million Dollar Game. Maybe it’s best to play nice. This is best for business. Just bury that Todd guy.

Yes, I’m speculating but I hope I’m right. Because if Berkey really believes all the shit coming out of his mouth…yikes. Going forward at least when someone comes forward asking for coin it can be standard procedure to have them show documentation. Redact what you have to but let’s get the diagnosis and prognosis…we can go from there.

Let’s picture a world where Mercer is on this twitter space a few months back. Druff, who according to Berkey is obligated to, gets on the Space and says “Rob, with all respect, have you provided documentation of your illness? Because the community has been scammed before”. Holy fucking hell Todd would probably get immediately booted out of the space and everyone would say what an uncaring asshole he was.

Probably nothing would have changed except Todd getting absolute hell for a few months…and now he would be proven correct but the damage would already be done. It wouldn’t have been worth it. The scam would have most likely succeeded. See that wasn’t to tough to imagine how it would have went down.

Anyways, at least going forward someone asking for documentation will be taken seriously and this nonsense can be curtailed. But a few months ago all it would have done is most likely given Druff 2 more months of harassment.

Vertucci did REALLY push mercer on everyone early. He obviously saw something in rob that he found relatable......

But to be fair to nick, i guess he did stop promoting mercer at some point and said it was because he realized mercer was acting shady / shitty to people. Nick did not want to accuse him of being a fraud, which is understandable and comparable to Todd's stance. Nick also never mentioned jami, positively or negatively despite her being on the show and trying to grift to his players / audience.
If he wants to set a boundary to not touch on the cancer fraud stuff I think that's ok.
He has (mostly) handled this situation MUCH better than other things he's been involved in.


There are plenty of other things that nick does to criticize.
If stories start coming out that nick had other reasons to push mercers story, I will certainly reconsider this stance.
Hard to imagine Vertucci doing anything that doesn't directly benefit himself.

[Dan Druff]

It’s all about money/raising profile/engagement for most of the parties commenting on this situation. Berkey is doing things backwards. Narrative is Lafay (woman) is scrutinized and Mercer (man/swamp creature) was not. Now go back and find some “examples” of the hypocrisy. Now Druff is an easy target. He’s not doing this for money. Druffs not going to pay Above the Felt to sponsor Berkey for anything. So Druff made this tweet we can take out of context. Let’s bury him.

Why take it easy on Vertucci/HCL? Vertucci passed the bag around for this degenerate to play high limit pai gow. Well HCL is the highest viewed product in poker right now. Would Berkey maybe be a bit gun shy because his representation also represents Rampage? A frequent player on HCL livestreams. Including their Million Dollar Game. Maybe it’s best to play nice. This is best for business. Just bury that Todd guy.

Yes, I’m speculating but I hope I’m right. Because if Berkey really believes all the shit coming out of his mouth…yikes. Going forward at least when someone comes forward asking for coin it can be standard procedure to have them show documentation. Redact what you have to but let’s get the diagnosis and prognosis…we can go from there.

Let’s picture a world where Mercer is on this twitter space a few months back. Druff, who according to Berkey is obligated to, gets on the Space and says “Rob, with all respect, have you provided documentation of your illness? Because the community has been scammed before”. Holy fucking hell Todd would probably get immediately booted out of the space and everyone would say what an uncaring asshole he was.

Probably nothing would have changed except Todd getting absolute hell for a few months…and now he would be proven correct but the damage would already be done. It wouldn’t have been worth it. The scam would have most likely succeeded. See that wasn’t to tough to imagine how it would have went down.

Anyways, at least going forward someone asking for documentation will be taken seriously and this nonsense can be curtailed. But a few months ago all it would have done is most likely given Druff 2 more months of harassment.

Yup.

I don't think we should be hating on Vertucco/HCL, either. Yes, Vertucci was careless to not vet the guy better, but he was trying to do something nice (even if it also would help his/HCL's brand), so you can't be too hard on him. Nobody should be hard on Snoopdoug, as well. He didn't even have anything to gain by promoting Rob!

But everything else is spot on. It's easy to vilify guys like me and Slay with little consequence, so some will do it if it makes them look more empathetic. Ironically, Berkey and I developed what I thought was a good relationship when I was supportive of him maybe 18 months ago when he was getting shit for politically incorrect stuff he wrote. But here he is saying I'm sexist and questioning my motivation in calling out Jami in the first place. As I said, highly disappointing.

And you're 100% correct about what would have happened if I called out Rob. I thought about that at the time. The reaction would have been extreme anger from many people, especially those who only supported the Jami skepticism because of her prior bad rep. "Wow, Todd, all you ever do is pick on people with cancer. Are you not human?" I would have gotten the reputation as someone who tries to get attention by hassling cancer patients. No thanks.

The problem is that cancer is the second leading cause of death in developed countries (just behind heart disease), so almost everyone has a tragic memory of a relative or close friend who died of it (or is presently dying from it). Therefore, when you question a supposed cancer patient, these people instantly picture how they'd feel if their dying mom or best friend were hassled online about their condition. And they get mad. Really mad.

This is why the con is so effective. Poker isn't the first space where online cancer scams have taken place. This has existed for a long time, but the existence of Gofundme makes it especially easy, as you can reach a large audience, and donating is easy to do. You just need a way to amplify your scammy plea, and that's where you find an online community, get some social capital with them, and then bring out the money request and sob story.

It's even further complicated that there are bad people out there who also have non-terminal cancer, who realize it's an opportunity to exploit people by embellishing everything. Remember, bad people also really do get sick.

Anyway, bottom line is that had I shown any skepticism about Rob, I would have been jumped on even worse than last time with Jami.

[Shizzmoney]

I don't think we should be hating on Vertucco/HCL, either. Yes, Vertucci was careless to not vet the guy better, but he was trying to do something nice (even if it also would help his/HCL's brand), so you can't be too hard on him.

I disagree on this... even though I am sure the intentions were of him trying to do the guy a solid were pure.

Rob Mercer isn't the first to do this, and he won't be the last (it's not 100% confirmed but if a sportsbook placed odds, the "does he have cancer? - no" prop would be laying juice).

It looks like Nick has been in the scene for a while by now. Everyone knows the scammy side of poker exists; it's why this website exists, to inform people of various types of scams in our space. Hell, NWP/DD/PFA has been a victim to these this very same shit.

If one takes it upon yourself to amplify charity in any space, especially in *this* space, I think it is required to do *some* due diligence... even if with the most good natured intentions and even if that due diligence comes off as "encroching".

And that's even before considering the fact one is doing said amplifying to give money to an individual, using a sizeable platform Nick is repping (HCL), and the responsibility that comes with.

[JeffDime]

I can’t go down the whole Vertucci rabbit hole right now but if it’s true that Vertucci passed the hat around to all his buddies & had the podcast to push donations, while literally giving 0.0 out of his own pocket to the cause he’s promoting…that would be fucking hilarious and just vintage Vertucci.