Dan "Jungleman12" Cates Caught Up In Multi-Accounting Scandal

A number of scandals have rocked the online poker community in the past week, with the latest being the news that Dan “jungleman12” Cates has admitted to multi-accounting on various online poker sites. According to Cates, he played at least a handful of sessions under the account names linked to Jose “Girah” Macedo and Haseeb Qureshi.

The multi-accounting scandal is just the latest news in the strange relationship between several high stakes professional players and Macedo, who became known as the “Portuguese Poker Prodigy” on the twoplustwo.com forums. Macedo, who eventually became a sponsored pro for Lock Poker, was repeatedly defended by several prominent regulars in the site’s high stakes forum, including Cates. At the time, the allegations against Macedo were fairly minor; he was disqualified from a Lock Poker contest for allowing another player to play at least one session on his account, apparently while he was asleep.

However, a more serious scandal was brewing beneath the surface. After several accusations and a number of denials, Macedo eventually admitted to a scam in which he arranged heads up matches between professional players he had developed a relationship with against a couple of online players who were supposedly fish. Macedo then asked to watch the players play these matches live, using Skype and TeamViewer to see the cards held by the players he had befriended – supposedly to discuss the hands while they were in progress.

In reality, Macedo was sharing their hole card information with the second player, essentially giving them the same advantage that a “superuser” would have – complete knowledge of their opponent’s hole cards. Approximately $45,000 was lost by players due to the scam, which Macedo has since apologized for. Macedo has committed to repaying his victims.

The revelations about Macedo then caused many to look into the relationship between Macedo and Cates, among others. Eventually, Cates admitted to having played on at least three different accounts that were shared between him, Macedo and Qureshi. Many of these revelations came from an interview Cates gave with Noah Stephens-Davidowitz and Vanessa Selbst at Subject: Poker, in which he admitted to having lied on several occasions in order to attempt to protect his reputation.

The full fallout from these scandals remains to be seen. Qureshi has reportedly decided to retire from poker, while Cates’ reputation has been severely tarnished.