Danish authorities have charged two people with aiding and abetting a third unnamed suspect in what could shape up to be one of the biggest online poker frauds of all time.



On Tuesday, Copenhagen Police Commissioner Torben Koldbrog announced that the country’s Economic Crime Department was investigating a 32-year-old member of the “Danish poker elite”in conjunction with a cheating scheme that potentially netted tens of millions of dollars.

The mastermind of the crime reportedly installed Remote Access Trojans(RAT) on the computers of several high-stakes poker players that allowed him to view the screens of his opponents in real-time at the poker tables. The perpetrator was also known to sell cheap laptops to well-known players with the Trojan software preinstalled.

The investigation began when eight people, some of whom were reportedly close friends of the perpetrator, had come forward and accused the suspect of fraud.

After the announcement in the Danish press, sleuths in the online poker community soon started speculating on who the unnamed offender could be. Apart from his age, Danish police revealed that the suspect was a European Poker Tour winner.

Posters on 2+2 quickly turned their attention to 2007 EPT Warsaw champ Peter “Zupp” Jepsen (pictured above), whom they linked to a few strange incidents involving a similar type of online poker fraud.

In a series of articles published on HighStakesDB titled “The Making of Viktor Blom,” Jepsen was accused of allowing Swedish high-stakes player Robert “Gulkines” Flinkto play under his screen name, giving him an advantage that helped him beat Blom (pictured) to the tune of $800,000.

According to Jepsen, Flink had busted his own Bet365 account and was desperate to continue playing against Blom. Since Jepsen had around $150,000 on the site, he admitted he let Flink play under his name, as he was “very confident in Gulkines’ abilities as a player.”

Here’s where things get weird: After the match, Jepsen said he received an email from Bet365 security stating that they had evidence that it was not he who had played against Blom. And since he had broken the site’s terms and conditions, he would have to return the entire $800,000 to Blom.

Gulkines, however, had continued to play and lost $300,000 since the battle with Blom. “Bet365 insisted that I deposit $150,000 so that they could transfer the full $800,000 to Blom,” Jepsen said at the time. “If I did not agree, then they said they would drag me to court and make sure that I never played online poker again… anywhere!” In the end, the entire amount was reportedly paid back and the authorities were never involved.

In 2009, Jepsen claimed to have been targeted by online poker scam artists. In an article published on Betfair, the high-stakes player recounted clicking on a link that was sent to him by a “friend” whose MSN account had been compromised. The site “contained a login area, forum, strategy articles, and poker related videos, but alarm bells started ringing when he… was prompted to install the latest version of Flash.”

After noticing that the upgrade was being downloaded directly from the website, Jepsen became even more suspicious and asked a friend who worked for the “police IT department” to check his laptop for malicious tampering. This friend found that the site was “indeed a scam and contained a backdoor Trojan, which in turn would likely install a key-logger.”

With some local media reporting that a member of the Dutch police cyber-crime unit was involved in the recent fraud, the links between Jepsen and the crime become even more compelling.

An attorney for Jepsen has denied all of the charges against his client and stated that the allegations of multimillion dollar losses were “entirely baseless.”

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