It all started (for me) with a Facebook post
from PPA’s VP Rich Muny on April 28th – OK, that’s more than 24 hours ago, but
this was the catalyst of it all. Muny
pointed out some of Jim Thackston’s emails on Internet Gaming security to
casino companies like Harrah’s (now Caesar’s) read more like extortion notes
than helpful advice. Muny points out
that Thackston’s interest went from do-gooder pro-online poker to anti-online
gloom and doom for financial reasons – his own. This was followed up by a second Facebook post
from Muny pointing out that one of Thackston’s companies - CONCIERGE
HOLDINGS, INC. – has as an officer one Bill Byers, the same Bill Byers
Thackston and political pundit/anti-gambling foe Cheri Jacobus point to as
having a demo that shows (on play money sites) that it might be possible to
launder money through online poker.
In reading the
link to CONCIERGE,
I saw that the VP was Hilbert Shirey. Having
the unusual last name of Exinger, I am one to remember others with unusual
names. And somewhere in the back of my
mind I remembered Shirey having poker connections, so I “wiki’d” his name – and find
that Dewey Tomko is his neighbor (they live in the same city) and is a longtime
golf partner (according to Wiki). The
same Dewey Tomko that supposedly penned an anti-online
screed/editorial – with Bill Byers.
So I passed this info on to Muny, and he updated his post.
Then Nolan
Dalla got involved, and we’re all thankful for that. For he knows Tomko, and claimed that
something smelled fishy. And today, he
wrote a blast
of an article that recalls his last-night phone conversation with Tomko –
the gist being that Tomko had NOTHING to do with the editorial (and a bunch of
other stuff that makes it pretty clear that this is a position that he could
not have taken).
From here, all hell has broken loose, and there are still more
shoes to drop.
Writer Steve Ruddock, who initially called
out Tomko for his stance, has courageously apologized. Ruddock said he had initial reservations, and
now says he “…was hoodwinked by a usually reliable media outlet.” We’ll get to that “usually reliable media
outlet” in a moment. Others have
jumped on the “bury Thackston/Byers/Jacobus” moment – Johnny
G and Haley
Hintze, to name two (both have been critical before, but hey, there’s blood
in the water). Finally, the folks at F5Poker.com
have been trying to get a response from the “usually reliable media outlet”
– The Press of Atlantic City
(who ran the original Byers/Tomko editorial) – to confirm/deny its
authenticity. From their article:
When we called and talked to Editorial Page
Editor Jim
Perskie at the Press of Atlantic City he
indicated that an email of verification was sent back to both parties and that,
via a Google search, they were who they said they were. Upon further pressing
of how this op-ed came to be, we were stopped with: “I’ve got nothing for you.”
For the other side, Thackston stands by Tomko’s role, tweeting:
Jim Thackston @pokerbank1729 10h (about Noon ET 5-5-14)
@Haley_Hintze
@CheriJacobus @RichMuny @ACPressTopNews Mr. Tomko may have
changed his mind but he certainly co-authored the op-ed.
Cheri Jacobus merely
cites Thackston’s tweet as “proof” of the authenticity. There are others who are trying to get to the
bottom of all this (Ruddock, Dalla, and John Mehaffey). There is bound to be plenty more in the days
ahead, but, as Dalla summarized:
Someone is lying. Someone is making
things up. Someone needs to be exposed as soon as possible and all
those who have used any evidence or testimony from such an individual
should be dismissed immediately as sources who are not credible.
And nowhere in all
of this have I mentioned Sheldon Adelson’s name. Ain’t that a bitch?
I’m sure it will
come up soon.
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