A teenager hacks DraftKings, a Texas legislator passing on casinos, and a Hard Rock coming to the Black Hills are some of the short stacks CardsChat picked up in its latest orbit of poker news.
Maurice Hawkins won his record-breaking 15th World Series of Poker Circuit ring at at Harrah’s Cherokee last week with a victory in a $2,200 buy-in High Roller event for $54,599. Josh Reichard broke a tie with Hawkins and won his 14th ring in April, but Hawkins re-took the top spot — which he’s held for years — in Oklahoma.
Hawkins has zero bracelets and only $667,000 in winnings in bracelet events, but he is a Circuit master who has $2,255,869 in 143 cashes on the WSOP trail.
Hard Rock bringing brand to Black Hills
Hard Rock International will open a “rocksino” in Deadwood, S.D., August 8.
“As a community notorious for entertaining guests since 1876, Deadwood is excited to welcome Rocksino by Hard Rock as our newest, can’t miss property,” said Mayor of Deadwood, David Ruth, in a press release. “Our rich, old West history combined with the Hard Rock brand will enhance the Deadwood experience we are known for. The Rocksino by Hard Rock will surely be an additional gem luring visitors to our amazing community.”
The smaller casino will be slots-only.
Deadwood, a tourist town located in the heart of the Black Hills National Forrest, has several poker rooms and a historical connection with the game of poker. Wild Bill Hickok died and is buried there. He was shot in a poker game holding aces-and-eights — the “deadman’s hand.”
No casinos for Texas
A push to allow its residents to vote on allowing casinos in Texas failed. According to the Nevada Independent, “legislative leaders said they didn’t have enough votes to advance the measure out of the state House.”
Backed by the Las Vegas Sands corporation, bills were submitted this year that, if approved, would have allowed Casios to be built in four cities. The expansion was a long-shot in the red state.
Las Vegas Sands Senior Vice President of Government Relations Andy Abboud remained optimistic.
“Our efforts to bring destination resorts to Texas took an extraordinary step forward with the vote in the Texas House of Representatives,” Abboud told the Texas Tribune Fridays. “Although it narrowly fell short of the two-thirds threshold of support required for a constitutional amendment, there is no question that our efforts are on the right track.”
Teenager hacks DraftKings
A Wisconsin teenager who bragged that “fraud is fun” was charged with stealing more than $600,000 from DraftKing accounts.
Joseph Garrison, 18, of Madison, Wis., is facing six Federal criminal complaints for accessing people’s accounts and swiping their money.
“Fraud is fun,” Garrison allegedly wrote in a text message to a co-conspirator, court documents said. “I’m addicted to seeing money in my account.”
He used what is called a “credential stuffing attack” to get into people’s accounts. Here’s how the Feds described that:
“During a credential stuffing attack, a cyber threat actor collects stolen credentials, or username and password pairs, obtained from other large-scale data breaches of other companies, which can be purchased on the dark web.
The threat actor then systematically attempts to use those stolen credentials to obtain unauthorized access to accounts held by the same user with other companies and providers in order to compromise accounts where the user has maintained the same password.”
The kid sounds like a real peach. According to Marketwatch, “Garrison was already facing charges in a separate case in Wisconsin for allegedly paying people in Bitcoin online to phone in bomb threats to his own high school in Madison and in other cities where his friends lived, a practice known as ‘swatting,’ according to court documents. In the case of one such call, Garrison allegedly requested the threat be called in because he was bored and wanted to go home, according to court records in Wisconsin.”
While police was investigating Garrison for swatting, they discovered the then 17-year-old “had been involved in a number of hacking scams for years and had amassed a fortune of $2.1 million by the age of 17. He admitted making $15,000 a day on average from 2018 through 2021, but told investigators he had ceased being involved in any hacking activity.”
The moral of this story is: Don’t use the same usernames and passwords on all your accounts or some teenager will steal all your money.
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