High Stakes Player “Ryusuke” MIA Owing $15,000,000

08:57
17 Apr

High stakes player “Ryusuke” has been accused of disappearing with debts of $15million, with Nik “Airball” Arcot among those allegedly fleeced by the Japanese player.

Ryusuke, whose real name is unknown, was one of the biggest winners on the Hustler Casino Live show, winning $684,000 in his 12-week run at the California casino’s live-streamed cash games.

However, it appears that after-show sessions and games off camera saw him run up big debts, with Airball claiming: “He’s a scammer!”

Currently battling Matt Berkey in a Grudge Match, Airball Arcot revealed that Ryusuke “...owes about $½million to me and several other people locally.”

When quizzed on the Japanese pro disappearing from the cash game scene, Airball stated:

“He’s gone silent, he owes money in Japan, hasn’t responded in months and is gone. Like, verified, he’s a scammer, he owes me $160,000 personally. It’s unfortunate...such a nice guy I thought.”

Other regs in the HCL game were equally shocked at the news, “Mars” tweeting out that Ryusuke had also mugged off one of his friend’s home games.

“OMG please find him. He won 800k total in my friend’s home game. My friend paid him all. Then he lost a game and never come back to pay. Now Ryusuke owe that game 170-180k.”

Mars added that there is a “25k” bounty for recovering the money.

Poker Twitter was soon on the case, with reports that he has been seen as far afield as California, Florida, the Philippines and Cambodia, while others were speculating on his possible non-poker gambling.

“I remember last December when I saw someone with the nickname Ryusuke on Stake, wagering a huge amount of money on sports bets,” wrote LaszloB, adding: “wondered if it was the same guy or not. After reading this, I think the chance of it being the same person has gone up.”

An apparently fake Twitter account raised hopes that Ryusuke was heading back to the US to deal with his issues there, but HCL producer and co-owner Ryan Feldman kiboshed that angle...

Meanwhile, Doug Polk was delving into some of the biggest pots played involving Ryusuke on the HCL show, including on that occurred on the infamous Garrett Adelstein/Robbi Jade Lew stream...

Scams and scammers in poker come in all shapes and sizes, and although there is no happy ending for the victims in many cases, the bad guys are rarely forgotten.

One case in point was our story last year of WSOP staking scammer Eric Conti, who blagged $47k in buy-ins only to not play and instead disappear with the loot.

Last year it transpired that in the intervening years, Conti had been jailed for 8 years for attempted sexual battery of two young boys he had apparently adopted.

His release was revealed on the 2plus2 forum, with the comment:

"Fwiw, he's released and his permanent address is listed here: https://offender.fdle.state.fl.us/offender/sops/offenderSearch.jsf. If any backers want to go have a talk with him after all these years."

Have you been scammed or know of a scammer? Let us know what happened in our social media channels!