Poker Group FairPlay USA Exposed on 2+2 As Caesars and MGM Astroturf PR Effort
FairPlay USA Exposed on 2+2 As Caesars and MGM Astroturf PR Effort
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Once again, shady goings on at 2+2 caught the eye of its impressive cadre of amateur detectives who again succeeded in exposing fraud on 2+2.
This time, the fraudster was Marisa McNee, a principal at the public relations firm Middle Coast LLC.
With a decent amount of fanfare, Marisa McNee launched a non-existent legal entity called FairPlay USA, claiming that her organization was a “new coalition of law enforcement officials, consumer protection experts, poker players, companies in the commercial gaming industry and other Americans concerned about Internet gambling.
As it turns out, this description of FairPlay USA, and even the existence of a legal entity, is basically completely false, and is, at best, an absurd exaggeration. I’m a little handicapped by FairPlay USA’s refusal to answer questions I posed to them on this subject, but here is what seems to be the case:
FairPlay USA is not a coalition as it claims. It claims to have law enforcement members, poker players and consumer safety experts among its ranks. Please note the use of the plural on each of these groups. In fact, FairPlay USA has NO MEMBERS AT ALL. It has a board of advisors.
So look at FairPlay USA’s claim to be a coalition. They say they have plural law enforcement officers, poker players and consumer safety experts. What they actually have is one of each of those classes of peope on their board of advisors:
Law Enforcement: Tom Ridge, former director of Homeland security.
Poker players: Greg Raymer
Consumer Safety Expert: Parry Aftab
That’s it. FairPlay USA, meaning specifically Marisa McNee, refused to answer my direct request for evidence that there were more people involved from these categories than these three people. I take this refusal to answer as a tacit admission that my assumption that there is no coalition of people in FairPlay USA is correct. As Marisa McNee said in the thread on 2+2, “we don’t have members, we have supporters.”
Why would a group conducting a self-described “grassroots campaign” not have members? That makes no sense. A truly grassroots campaign would want as many members as it could possibly have.
The simple answer turns out to be that FairPlay USA is not a grassroots organization, movement or campaign. Its executive director, Marisa McNee, is a media consultant at Middle Coast LLC in the employ of Caesars and MGM. There are no members of FairPlay USA who are not employees of Middle Coast LLC.
