Gordon Vayo Sues PokerStars Over Confiscation of His Winning

Gordon Vayo, the professional poker player from the USA, sued PokerStars for confiscating $690,000 of his winnings and freezing his account. Gordon won a large amount of money in SCOOP tournament. The security service of the room spent an entire year investigating where the player was when he took part in the tournament. The decision of the Security Council was not in favor of the player. So, Vayo describes the actions of the company as a fraud.

Gordon Vayo's name is known in the poker community primarily for his second place in the  WSOP Main Event 2016, where he lost to Vietnamese Ki Nguyen.

Gordon lives in Los Angeles, but often travels to Ottawa (Canada) to legally play in the main client of PokerStars. According to him, since the moment of Black Friday (2011), the Canadian company has been deceiving its American players and has not given large sums of money to many people.

An important detail: Vayo acknowledged that he used the VPN while playing in the tournament, but for other purposes which were not related to playing on PokerStars, however, this explanation did not satisfy the security service of the room. Also, according to the claimant, despite the fact that he is not a citizen of the country, he played for several years on PokerStars from Ottawa (Canada), where it is permitted by law, without any troubles. Everything was fine until the moment when he won a major tournament SCOOP-01-H: $1050 NLHE Phased Tournament ($ 692,461) in May 2017. He played for a couple of months after the victory and only then in July he decided to withdraw money and that is where the troubles began.

Gordon Vayo was under constant control from PokerStars security service

PokerStars froze Gordon's account, demanding from him confirmation that he played from Canada when he won in the tournament. In case you forgot, the licensed room PokerStars also functions in the United States (New Jersey) but it does not have access to the main pool of players.

Since then, the offended player was under constant control from PokerStars security service - he was checked for any "suspicious activity", he was asked for detailed information about his location. Even accounts of his friends and acquaintances were involved into the investigation. The trial ended last month not in favor of Gordon Vayo, so he went to a court with a civil suit for 29 pages of text.

The poker player said that PokerStars representatives are already preparing a counterclaim against him. Vayo himself demands from the poker room not only his winnings, but also compensation for the services of his lawyers and compensation for losses that he suffered while he wasn’t able to access the site.

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