PCA Players Arrested While Returning Home
8 years ago
27 Jan
The 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure may have started out on Paradise Island, but for three unlucky – or just plain foolish (or greedy, or both) – young players, it ended up costing them over $30,000, several hours in jail, and an allegedly all-round ‘terrifying ordeal’.
The yet un-named US players were returning from the massive poker festival, but failed to declare to US Customs that each of them had slightly over $10K in cash, each, on their persons.
With $10K being the limit, and customs apparently usually quite strict in enforcing these limits, the Nassau Airport police were called in – resulting in their money being confiscated and one of the group being subjected to a strip search, though apparently nothing illegal was found.
The three were then carted off to a small airport ‘jail’ by the Bahamian police where an ‘off-color’ joke about ‘being raped in jail’ began to worry the group, according to an interview 2 of them gave to Bart Hanson for his podcast on crushlivepoker.com.
This was followed by their transfer to the local Nassau jail and the prospect of being put in with the local prison population. After being held for some time, “a female police officer is agitated by the fact that they still have possessions and everything is confiscated, including their passports,” according to the rough transcript of events posted on the popular 2+2 forum.
When one of the men was taken into an interrogation room, he admitted to having $175 over the limit for undeclared cash, and the group was then informed that “the Bahamian courts are closed on the weekends and because it is late on Friday night, the authorities threaten that they are going to have to spend the weekend in jail.”
According to their interview, several very frightening things occurred while in the Nassau jail, including claims that “one of the group witnesse(d) a brutal beating of a local in the next room over w(ith) police batons.”
Another of the arrested men claimed that he was taken towards a cell “drastically overcrowded with local Bahamians”, and where a “real life “****hole” (could) be seen in the back of the cell, overflowing with feces.”
As if this wasn’t enough to agitate the players, the same man apparently witnessed “the only other American in the facility, a pregnant woman, being released from a separate cell, and hears the guards tell her that her holding was a ‘miscommunication'," at which point he becomes “very frightened that he will be put in the overcrowded holding cell and comes close to a mental break down.”
The posters on 2+2 have been having a field day with this story, the majority of them having little sympathy for the trio’s behaviour which landed them in such troubled waters. Although many agree that their treatment was taken a bit too far, even if much of it was designed only to scare them.
‘Richas’ covered many of the points when he declared:
When will poker players learn that laws and rules apply to them? Here we seem to have three people who knew about the $10k limit, wired the rest back but forgot that the relatively small amounts in their wallet alongside the £10k they were transporting in their bag put them over the limit.”
His next opinion reflected what many were thinking:
Come on. We know the 10k was to avoid tax or visibility of the money, you know the thing they call tax evasion and money laundering. The outcome might be nasty but that is in part because they were being stupid and in part because they were greedy.”
The standard method for declaring excess cash – rules for which are plastered all over the airport apparently – is to fill out a form, upon which the cash is quite happily allowed through customs barring any other ‘legal’ issues which might arise.
A common approach, however, is to split large sums of cash between several players – as may have been the case here – and the undeclared sum goes through in batches; this, however, is also illegal, and there are plenty of stories from poker players alone who have fallen foul of this attempt to avoid declaring larger sums than $10k.
You have a form, declare the cash. End.” posted ‘Rochas’. “Don't be surprised that groups of people carrying 10k-ish get detained - the reason is that it is highly suspicious of conspiracy and so (given the venue) potentially drugs related.”
Among the various versions of 2+2 posters’ musings on the subject, Rochas again hit the nail on the head when he stated:
Just grow up, pay your tax, declare cash when asked to, read the damn form they give you. You'd read the payout scheme and the tournament structure to see who got what and when the blinds rise - why on earth would you not read the damn customs declaration?”
As another poster, ‘arcdog’ clarified:
If you are either given a customs form - or now in the Bahamas it's done by kiosk - just read it, and if you have to declare then you'll know it. You don't have to do anything other than give honest answers to questions you are asked.”
He also cleared up the amount of cash you are entitled to bring through, stating:
As for the exact amount, I've declared multiple times in Nassau and the amount is never either counted or even looked at. They ask where you got it, you tell them, and from what I can tell they spend a few minutes looking you up for past convictions or whatever. Whole process takes about 15 minutes once you go with an agent to a private area.”
‘Rochas’ did have a modicum of feeling for the men involved however, with the rather back-handed statement:
I am sure it was horrible, I even feel for them but it is feeling sorry for people being STUPID.”
Some online critics felt that PokerStars themselves ought to have stepped in to help out in some way, but more still felt that if anything the PCA sponsors and hosts ought to insist that the ‘book‘ be thrown at the men, to serve as an example of people doing things exactly the wrong way. What do you think? Too harsh or just right?
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