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The poker community has been in the past week or so all about the “Girah Scandal” – which is not at all about ’Girah’ any more. The true principles have become Haseeb ‘dogishead’ Qureshi and Daniel ‘Jungleman12’ Cates, the career of both in ruins and not a word they say believed any more. Although it took them this much to eventually come clean, at least finally it seems they did.
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Haseeb 'dogishead' Qureshi
In a recent blog post on 2p2, before retiring entirely from poker, or at least saying so, Haseeb ‘dogishead’ Qureshi felt the need to once again, finally clarify everything he had been dishonest about. A few contributions later, Daniel ‘Jungleman12’ Cates also confessed, as a follow-up to his recent interview with Subject: Poker. Some excerpts of interest are as follows.
Haseeb Qureshi (under the telling screen name ‘Dog was dead’):
“This is Haseeb Qureshi. You all must be aware that several days ago, I announced that I was retiring from poker, self-banned my TwoPlusTwo account, and said that I was no longer going to respond to any of the allegations on TwoPlusTwo... But I am no longer able to leave. Since I have announced my retirement, things have heated up on TwoPlusTwo in a way I had never expected... People are now making very serious allegations about me, without any proof; allegations that could follow me for the rest of my life. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to take that sitting down... In the same way that I owe it to myself to move on from poker, I also owe it to myself to deal with this before I do. So I am here to set the record absolutely straight. To say what exactly did happen and what didn’t.”
Qureshi here provides an extensive and allegedly accurate timeline of what happened, more or less corresponding to what is already known. He goes into details, summarising all the bits of information that have surfaced. Of particular interest is the very ending, concerning Ashton Griffin’s post, about which he states he intends to clear what did happen and why:
“Ashton then posted in TwoPlusTwo with claims that I had brainwashed Jungle, that everything had been my idea, that I am a sociopath and that I was likely involved in Jose’s scam itself. It was then suggested at various points that I have scammed or have attempted to scam Jungle and am skimming money from him, that I have installed or have attempted to install Trojans on Jungle’s and/or other people’s computers, that I am a sociopath and pathological liar, that I am a con artist and my relationship with Jungle was meant to take advantage of someone who didn’t know better or was socially ill-equipped, that I have had physical relations with him, that I have been physically abusing Jungle for his compliance, among other accusations.”
What follows is a list of things he had been dishonest about, “along with an explanation as to why” – this we paste here in full:
“I was somewhat dishonest about the motivation behind trying to stop from letting the scandal being revealed immediately. Although all of the reasons I previously stated (that we had to protect our money that he had, that we didn’t want to spook him if he would run, that we weren’t sure what he’d do if he lost all incentive to be honest) were true and we did consider them, the honest fact is that we just panicked. We didn’t know what to do, we never expected that Jose could scam anyone, and we knew if the scandal broke in an uncontrolled way that we would be implicated. I don’t think we really had any idea what we were going to do if the scandal didn’t go public. We didn’t think it through that far.
“I said I was the person who played on Girah’s account. It was actually Jungle. I wanted to protect him. Although it was originally his and Jose’s idea to play on the Girah account, I wanted to protect Jungle, and I knew that my reputation would already be destroyed by how closely I was associated with Jose. I simply wanted to help my friend. Some people are claiming that I was paid off by him to lie; that is not true. He has not paid me anything, and we never discussed anything regarding any payoff. Although for all of the work I’ve done for him in a professional capacity he had agreed to pay me, I tried to take the fall for him because I wanted to protect my friend. I thought it was the right thing to do. You can probably tell that I thought of it as a noble thing, but it may have just ended up being immoral and stupid. I don’t know. But that’s why I did it.
“I chipdumped to Jose. I finally revealed this lie in my interview with Bluff. I lied about this because I was afraid that when it came out, it would look like I was complicit with Jose in trying to help him win the Bluff challenge, and I knew it would be hard to believe that I had no idea that it was going on. I also knew that people would take it as evidence that he was just my puppet, that I invented Jose, etc. But I didn’t, and I was afraid. That is why I lied about it.
“I said about the 40k debt that we owed to Jose was for a down payment by a house. It was suggested by somebody that this was the explanation for the money we owed him. I don’t know who came up with this, but I went along with it trying not to verify it outright (though I may have once, I don’t recall). The reason why I lied about this is because the real reason for the 40k debt was for Jungle later playing on the SamChauhan account. I didn’t want to implicate Jungle for this, and so I wanted to protect him. In retrospect, it was kind of a pointless lie, because we didn’t have to admit to the SamChauhan account in order to explain this, but that did not occur to me at the time.
“It has been claimed that I made several lies of omission regarding my relationship with Jose, but I genuinely did not. I simply either forgot about them, or neglected to mention them. The fact that I would crop and upload photos for him to me did not seem worth mentioning. I also neglected to mention that our original agreement included that I would act as an agent for him for online training sites, but I never mentioned it in my blog post because Jim Erwood ended up signing him a deal with PokerStrategy for which I could find no better deal, so I never ended up actually closing any deals as his agent. Beyond a training site (which I didn’t end up doing), Jim Erwood was his sole agent, so it seemed to me pointless to mention. I also genuinely forgot that I logged onto his TwoPlusTwo account (although after it was mentioned that I did, I remembered). I do not remember how many times I logged in or how many posts he asked me to make on it, but it had to have been very few. It was genuinely not a significant or suspect event in the recollection of my relationship with Jose. I also set up his blog for him and logged onto his Twitter account a few times to help him set up a background. He was very unwieldy with technology, as several people can attest to.
“Jungle went along with the story I gave. Once he was interviewed by Noah and Vanessa, he ended up telling the truth about everything. But in the interview as far as I heard, he did not represent our relationship to Jose or the stake very accurately. The impression I got when I heard his interview is that he was suggesting I was solely handling the stake and he simply didn’t do anything and barely interacted with Jose. I was informing him of what was going on the whole way through, and he was fully aware of (though probably wasn’t paying much attention or doesn’t remember) most of the details. But it was he and I who both agreed on the 100k number, that we were going to get it onto Lock Poker, we all signed a staking contract, etc. He also spoke to Jose several times and interacted on chat with him a decent amount, but I clearly spoke to him far more than he did.”
Finally, Qureshi addresses a number of specific persons, including Griffin, those who claim he has taken advantage of ‘Jungleman’ and all those accusing him personally but in public. As a conclusion, he writes:
“That is all. I want everyone here to know that I feel very ashamed of the wrong that I have done. But I also want people to know that I am going to stand up for myself, and that unlike some people on here believe, I do not believe that I am unredeemable.”
Daniel 'Jungleman12' Cates
Daniel Cates:
“Ok I read over what Haseeb said, and what he posted is true
“I’d like to say that I do trust Haseeb and I really don’t think he’s taken advantage of me. I was aware of what was going on and I know that he made mistakes but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t responsible too. It upsets me to see you all accuse him of using me and all the other ridiculous accusations with regards to me.
“I’ve been feeling really cornered lately and have made a lot of decisions based on anger and frustration, but I’ve been thinking about it lately and talking to people. In retrospect I’ve made a lot of mistakes and been dishonest about them—I’ve mistakenly vouched for someone, multiaccounted, and then lied about it. In addition I’ve acted immaturely and stupidly in the forums. I know what I did was wrong and really regret how this all happened. I would like to apologize to everyone that I’ve hurt because of this--the people that I multiaccounted against, the people that I lied to, and the people that I acted poorly towards. I feel like my response to this for the most part has largely been splitting hairs, getting angry at people, overall acting like an idiot when I should just take the responsibility and apologize. Well, here is my apology.
“Thanks to all the people who messaged me to make me feel better.”
Whether you believe now all or any of this is entirely up to you, dear reader. The community seems to conclude, however, that had they not been so dishonest in the past days as the scam unfolded, Macedo could have well taken responsibility for what happened and even though they would not have been glorified, they could have saved themselves by coming out in time.
At any rate, I intended this to be my last report on the scandal.
Related articles:
Jungleman and Dogishead Interviewed on Girah Scandal [4]
Jose Macedo Busted for Scamming His Students [5]