GGMillion$ bracelet winner banned, $1.1 million reimbursed to the players


A huge surprise payment landed for Chris Brewer, Patrick Leonard and a host of other big names in one of the biggest security reimbursements ever.

Poker
Francesco Garofalo defeated Chris Brewer heads-up

It was one of the sickest online final tables ever with Chris Brewer, Bryn Kenney, Patrick Leonard, Dimitar Danchev, Adrian Mateos, Roman Hrabec and Ole Schemion, and they were all defeated by relative unknown Francesco Garofalo. 

Or were they? 

Yesterday Patrick Leonard confirmed he had received a very welcome reimbursement from GGPoker worth $152,733 from their security department. 

The specifics were not disclosed but he quickly worked out that that was the difference between his 4th place finish and 3rd place in the $25,000 GGMillion$ bracelet event. 

The player who got heads-up in that event, Chris Brewer, also confirmed he got the same relative refund. However, sadly for him, no bracelet (but the extra quarter million was probably nice). 

Over $1.1 million was seized and returned

In total, it appears that $1.1 million was seized and reimbursed amongst the players in this event, and the folks at MTT Database Review showed what that meant for the final table:

Quite how Franceso is thought to have cheated is not clear, given the level of the field he was playing against, ghosting or RTA is the more likely candidate. 

This is not the biggest refund in online poker history. Way back in 2007, the sister of Mark Teltscher was disqualified from the WCOOP Main Event. She won that event at the time and her $1,378,331 winnings were reimbursed amongst everyone who cashed, with Kyle Schroeder being awarded the title. The mystery of who was playing on Mark Teltscher’s sister’s account remains unsolved. 

What was your biggest security reimbursement? Let us know in the comments: