2/16/11 - Travis Makar Interview - DonkDown

[The 6th Wilbury]

Originally Posted by mookman5

Thanks for doing this 6th. I was in the chat from the start, I am the one who noticed the Travis person was making hints he was the real deal. I chatted him in private, he said he was the real Travis, so I mentioned to the guys that they may have Travis listening and in the chat.

If I had more time to prepare I could have came up with better questions. I do not recall Lauren offering much in the chat while he was on the air. She was just chatting mostly, but not of anything of importance to the scandal.

I did find the segment interesting. I am holding off on giving my opinion on a few things, or what he could have been implying.

I really hope more comes out, but it seems like he could confirm what I have felt all along; Leggett is less than honest and that the company did a pretty massive cover-up.

Mookman, thanks again for your part in this show and interview. You may not have had a chance to prepare, but I sense you were among those firing questions that Druff and Micon could pass to Makar. Besides, you seemed to be the one who confirmed that this was the real Makar. If that doesn't happen, we don't have this interview. So big props.

I do apologize if I'm glossing over anything that didn't strike me as being all that interesting (e.g. Makar's brother). I hope I'm not downplaying anything important. The interview was hard to follow at times and at this point, I'm transcribing mostly for my own digestion. But hopefully it helps those who might not be able or willing to listen to an hour-long phone conversation.

[Tyresias]

Le sigh. I'm gonna have to listen to this for my own show right?

[The 6th Wilbury]

Apparently, Russ Hamilton worked on Nixon's staff in the early 1970s.

62nd-63rd Minutes: The 'brainwashdodo' Leaks.

MAKAR: This is a really interesting part here. I guess I can probably go through this although I may get bitched out by my lawyer. But we'll see. One of the things that Russ did was that Russ went into a meeting with several people. I'm not going to name who it was. Several attorneys as well as several higher-ups in the companies. They proceeded to sit down and talk about how they're going to solve this problem after 'brainwashdodo' released a handful of documents.

DDR: Yeah, that's interesting. I was going to ask you about brainwashdodo. Go on.

MAKAR: Yeah, I know who he is. After he released some documents, they started panicking because originally they weren't going to release any of this stuff. They were going to shuffle this off just like AP did. They were going to come up with a way to get around it. And then when this brainwashdodo released some stuff, they kind of got screwed. They went into a meeting. Russ decided he was going to record this meeting to protect himself. Again, at that time, I was still dealing with Russ and I was still working on his computers. So he downloaded the recordings that he taped onto his computer. So I was able to copy those off and listen to them. They're six-hour-long recordings of their meetings where they're talking about what they're doing, how they're going to do this, who was involved, how to cover this up, how to cover that up.

[The 6th Wilbury]

It's so good. So, so good.

64th-67th Minutes - More brainwashdodo, $80K hush money, and the "Holy Grail"

[Micon briefly explains brainwashdodo's appearance on 2+2.]

MAKAR: He released a little bit of stuff, and I have everything he has.

DDR: So what was his deal and why did he do this? Who was brainwashdodo? You don't have to name him...

MAKAR: He worked for them. He got passed up for management. He was pissed off. He didn't even know who half the people were, so he just went and logged in and started looking up players by the money amounts that were in their accounts, copied out the data. He started emailing screen shots to himself. He first started to bribe...

[conversation in which the three try to identify Jim Ryan's successor]

DDR: Mookman5 says after Jim Ryan was Paul Leggett.

MAKAR: Yeah, Paul Leggett. So brainwashdodo basically was blackmailing Paul Leggett, and Paul Leggett would only agree to pay a certain amount of money to keep the data quiet.

[more indistinct conversation]

MAKAR: He [brainwashdodo] then, at that point, decided that wasn't enough money and he didn't really know who to contact. So he went ahead and put some information on the internet, figuring he'd grab some attention. And when he grabbed enough people's attention, some of the highers-up paid attention and contacted him.

DDR: According to Haley Hintze, brainwashdodo was paid $80K.

MAKAR: No. That was what he was offered from Paul.

DDR: So he got more than $80K?

MAKAR: Oh yeah, a lot more. Paul offered him $80,000, which I have the actual email that he sent to brainwash dodo, offering him $80,000. That wasn't enough. He wanted more.

DDR: Travis, you have the treasure trove of UB. You have the Holy Grail of emails.

MAKAR: I even have the machine. I have the machine that we used to do this on.

[The 6th Wilbury]

Who was it who said it would take another brainwashdodo type of insider to help provide a "smoking gun" against UB? Was it Barry? I honestly can't remember. Until such an occasion, it was said, we'll never really know anything concrete and we would continue to wade through speculation, hearsay and edumacated guesses. Realistically, however, that moment would probably never come.

Is this happens, we might just have that moment.

67th-68th Minute - A Nugget

DDR: Can you just at least tell us or promise us... because if this ends up not having a legal settlement... can you at least release this stuff?

MAKAR: If I know that I'm protected and my family is protected, then yes, stuff will be released. But if you need some actual proof, I would probably arrange just to meet with you personally...

DDR: Sure. Throw us a nugget.

MAKAR: ...you could look at it, but not copy it.

DDR: Sure. Or throw us some sort of nugget, something we can put up so we can say 'look at this.'

MAKAR: No, I can't give you anything you can copy and put up, but I could let you look and see what it is...

DDR: Yeah, okay.

MAKAR: ...so you could report back and say, 'Yes, it's definitely true.

DDR: Anything like that we would be willing to do. We would be willing to work with you.

[Tyresias]

If the Paul Leggett stuff is true, that is a huge deal. Thanks a lot for doing this Mark.

[The 6th Wilbury]

69th-70th Minutes - Hardships
Makar details some of the bizarre accusations levied upon his own mother, mentions the death of his son during the heat of the scandal, his wife's breakdown -- all reasons why he couldn't deal with the scandal several years ago. He describes death threats he received, prowlers at his house, misinformation about his debts.

71st-74th Minutes - Russ Hamilton

DDR: Russ Hamilton... do you know if he got a lot of threats from people. What was his lifestyle like about the time you were friends after this all broke? How could he be running around playing golf and poker?

MAKAR: My understand is... there could be money offshore. I know some of the other people, who are the higher-ups, definitely have money offshore stashed away. But as far as [Hamilton's] money situation, I believe he is getting close to being pretty well broke.

DDR: Really? Where did... he made a lot of money on this scandal, didn't he?

MAKAR: I couldn't tell you how much he actually made and how much was given to somebody else.

DDR: Someone made a lot of money. So you think Russ might be under somewhat of a financial squeeze. That's why maybe he's going to Gulfstream, playing in the $5/10/20 games.

MAKAR: Oh yeah-

DDR: You think that's meaningful money.

MAKAR: My understanding from what I hear about rumors and stuff is that he was going down there because he still plays golf with people that I've known. They tell me that he goes down there to play, that he started getting harassed and that he was actually going down there to make a living. But again, I don't know if that's really 100 percent true. You could look up public records and you could find out he has loans against all of his properties. This is a person who had so many properties that were all paid for. Now that all have loans against them.

DDR: That may be true and in fact I know Barry Greenstein said Russ is broke. But all this money went somewhere. I'm wondering what happened unless Russ made a lot of really bad investments with the money. You can lose any sum of money if you're dumb with it. A lot of large sports bets or something.

MAKAR: No doubt in my mind, and I know he lent a lot of money was never paid back. A lot of people -- I'm not gonna sit here and specifically say their names --

DDR: I've heard Annie Duke was loaned. I heard he loaned Annie Duke a large cash number that was just never paid back after the whole scandal broke.

MAKAR: Yes, that's absolutely true. She borrowed the money to buy a house in L.A., and she decided that she's not going to pay it back. And there was stuff when she was on The Apprentice show. Money was being funneled around to keep her on that show. It wasn't her talent and it wasn't her personality that kept her on that show.


Sweeeeeeeet.

[Donkalicious]

again if what he is saying is true how freaked out are people right now

[The 6th Wilbury]

I hate to summarize this section this way because at a quick glance, one might infer that Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth were involved in what Makar describes after. It's just the way the interview flowed. Suffice to say, this went from relatively uninteresting anecdotes about Hellmuth to one helluva revelation.

And Paul Leggett? You've got some 'splaining to do.

74th-78th Minutes - Annie & Phil, and an unseen cheating scandal
[Note: this is loosely a continuation of the previous part of the interview in re Annie Duke.]

MAKAR: Phil Hellmuth? I think he's a great guy. I've gone and dropped off money to him because he was playing in these After Dark Poker [sic] shows. I was asked to run an errand and he would take my son and show him around the set. He was always great. [unintelligible comment about Annie Duke]

DDR: So of those two, do you think either of them was involved in the cheating?

MAKAR: No, I don't really think they were involved in the cheating. I would say... they probably got... one of them probably benefitted more than the other from it, saying, 'I'll keep my mouth shot but I'm going to benefit.'"

DDR: Do you think either of them knew the cheating was going on before it was made public?

MAKAR [after a beat]: I really don't know. That I couldn't say, really, either way. Because, again, the cheating was so easily done and the other cheating that was going on -- even after the scandal thing broke -- was blatant that no one has even caught it yet. It still hasn't been caught.

DDR: What do you mean by that?

MAKAR: Some of the management in Costa Rica were cheating customers out of all kinds of money and that was never brought out. Nobody talked about it, nobody paid back refunds to people.

DDR: How were they cheating? Were they doing the superuser program or were they just taking money out of accounts?

MAKAR: Nope, they had a whole other way of doing it.

[Indistinct conversation]

DDR: Can you tell us how it happened? Or, if you can, tell us the nature... was it a poker cheat?

MAKAR: No, it was more of a...

DDR: Credit card processing?

MAKAR: ...a hole that was found. They shut down the hole, but never made mention of it to anybody. I have the records of the hole that was discovered-

[Note: both Witteles and Micon began asking questions simultaneously, so what follows is my attempt to parse out the various questions the two were throwing to Makar.]

DDR: Someone could just add money to their UB accounts? What we're asking is, when you cheat someone on a poker site, it could happen in one of two ways. Either you're playing poker against them and cheating in some way during the poker game, or it's something having to do with taking money out of their account without them knowing it. Or what if someone could just add money to their UB balance?

MAKAR: Let's just say, for instance, that I log into your account when you're not playing. And I go and I play against a bunch of people online and I win ten grand. Then I transfer that money out of your account. If you're a high-enough roller, you're not going to notice that money. So I'm playing under your name and you don't even know it.

DDR: And what if you lose?

MAKAR: Again, if you're a high-enough roller, you're not going to notice.

DDR: So you're saying that they gained access to other people's accounts, and if they lost, oh well. And if they won, they transferred out the winnings and the person [owner] came back with the same balance.

MAKAR: For the most part, as far as I know, not a single person ever noticed any money missing.

DDR: But that's what was going on. They were accessing other people's accounts is what was happening.

MAKAR: Yes. Yes. Through a hole that was discovered through a low... not even a tech person, just some random person who found a hole. They had their whole call center down there in Costa Rica and I can only imagine that if one person down there knew about it, that several knew about it.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by Donkalicious

again if what he is saying is true how freaked out are people right now

Not at all its stuff everyone already knows UB and CURRENT management are scum that won't suffer anything because a) They will
stay hidden like the little bit(hes they've always been. b) They truly don't care because they have people like Sebok and Prahlad saying come play here its all good.

Edit: Until Travis releases something/anything that he claims he has he is only looking to profit for himself and not help anyone get anything they got cheated out of.